Social EpidemiologyPublic Health

MD, PhD Naoki Kondo

We study social determinants of health (SDH/SDoH) and how to achieve health equity. SDH at the levels of society and community include income inequality, economic crises, and social capital; and those at individual level include income, educational attainment, occupation, and interpersonal relationships. We have also conducted intervention studies aiming to achieve health equity in the community.

Lab Website

Research and Education

This lab has involved with the following studies.

  1. Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study: the longitudinal study on social determinants of older adults’ health involving over two hundred thousand people living in 60 municipalities in Japan and two regions in other Asian countries. We are conducting joint research with the World Health Organization and the World Bank to promote healthy ageing.
  2. Social prescribing: Building the close partnerships between medical care and community welfare services and local communities, never to bring patients back to the place which made them sick.
  3. Collaborative studies with business sector and governments: Building social services to reduce health inequality, applying for the latest behavior scientific theories and evidence.
  4. Causal inferences in social epidemiology: Developing statistical methods accurately evaluating the impacts of changing social systems on the health of individuals with diverse social backgrounds.
  5. Planetary health sciences: Collaborative study with multiple disciplines: aiming to achieve a better future harmonizing between the planet, living nature, and human.

Our monograph on healthy ageing, published with WHO　(download: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/279010)

Health in Japan: Social Epidemiology of Japan since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics:

Recent Publications

  1. Inoue K*, Athey S, Baicker K, Tsugawa Y. Heterogeneous effects of Medicaid coverage on cardiovascular risk factors: secondary analysis of randomized controlled trial. BMJ. 2024:386:e079377.
  2. Ishimura N, Inoue K, Maruyama S, Nakamura S, Kondo N. Income Level and Impaired Kidney Function Among Working Adults in Japan. JAMA Health Forum. 2024;5(3):e235445. doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2023.5445
  3. Nishio M, Haseda M, Inoue K, Saito M, Kondo N. Measuring functional ability in Healthy Ageing: testing its validity using Japanese nationwide longitudinal data. Age Ageing. 2024 Jan 2;53(1):afad224. doi: 10.1093/ageing/afad224.
  4. Nishioka D, Takaku R, Kondo N*. Medical expenditure after marginal cut of cash benefit among public assistance recipients in Japan: natural experimental evidence. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 2021:jech-2021-217296.
  5. Haseda M, Takagi D, Stickley A, Kondo K, Kondo N*. Effectiveness of a community organizing intervention on mortality and its equity among older residents in Japan: A JAGES quasi-experimental study. Health Place. 2022;74:102764.

Social Epidemiology

Professor：Naoki Kondo
Associate Professor: Kosuke Inoue (the Hakubi Project), Daisuke Takagi (Department of Social Impact Assessment and Evaluation),  Daisuke Nishioka(Department of Social Impact Assessment and Evaluation)
Junior Associate Professor: Maho Haseda
Assistant Professor：Yukiko Honda,  Nana Ishimura (Department of Social Impact Assessment and Evaluation),  Haruna Kawachi (Department of Social Impact Assessment and Evaluation)

Email：contact@socepi.med.kyoto-u.ac.jp
URL：https://socepi.med.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/

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