What constitutes health guidance? According to its defi nition in “terms for nursing practices” (Japanese Nursing Association), it involves a comprehensive view of an individual’s problems that takes into account a person’s overall health and ability to recognize his/her everyday problems and attitudes toward those problems. While respecting a person’s background and outlook, health counseling offers sympathetic and supportive information and assistance, and works with the individual to change counter-productive attitudes and behavior. Understanding the implications of that defi nition, the Area of Health Guidance is conducting research and development on techniques for establishing a community care system, and for building a healthy community, based on caring for individuals who actually live in the community, regardless of their employment. At the same time, it is conducting research and development on a suitable evaluation method for the project.
At the present time, we are conducting research on: (1) Modes of cooperation among specialists to be considered in the establishment of cooperative community health systems (Chart 1): (2) Theory and practice in community health nursing: what public health nurses actually do.