Innovation: Smart Life Project

Japan

AAI Domain: Independent, healthy and secure living (increasing life expectancy, improving access to healthcare services)

Japan is already the society with the longest average life expectancy in the world and is at the forefront of meeting the challenges of an ageing society in a variety of ways but one of the most significant and potentially influential social innovations is the Smart Life Project. The Smart Life Project (SLP) is a development from existing national health promotion campaigns that operates on a national scale with the aim of increasing the healthy life expectancy by reducing the impact of non-communicable diseases such as cancer, heart disease and stroke through encouraging and supporting lifestyle behaviour change.

The SLP is an initiative of the Ministry of Health in partnership with municipalities, companies and civil society organisations right across Japan. The main priorities are ‘smart walk, eat and breath’ which relate to increasing the level of physical activity, reducing levels of obesity along with improvements in diet and reducing the prevalence of smokers from around 20% of the adult population to 12% by 2022.

All people aged 40 to 74 years are called for an annual check up and given health advice on how they could improve their likelihood of healthy life expectancy by making lifestyle changes such as more exercise, making changes to their diet, such as reducing their salt intake to help lower their blood pressure, and stopping smoking.

The SLP has more than 2,000 companies and organisations signed up to supporting people to lead a ‘smarter life’ that will reduce their risks of developing a range of non-communicable diseases and should extend their healthy life expectancy in the decades ahead. There are thousands of local initiatives being developed and implemented in the workplace by employers and in the community by municipalities and civil society organisations.

The implementation of SLP is overseen with expertise from Dentsu, a multi-national advertising agency, who organise the annual Healthy Life Expectancy Awards for localities that have demonstrated innovative practices that have shown promise in terms of changing people’s behaviours. Initial evaluation reports of the effectiveness of such lifestyle advice suggests that 30% of men and 40% of women who received specific health guidance reduced their risk of metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, obesity and type 2 diabetes) in subsequent years. The involvement of the public, private and civil society sectors in changing how people live and work is likely to have a gradual cultural change that will enable longer and healthier lives for more people.

Active ageing occurs over the whole of the life course and so a major initiative such as the Smart Life Project, which helps people to change lifestyle behaviours that are risk factors for the major non-communicable diseases in middle age and later life, is likely to have a significant impact over time.

The aim of SLP is to compress morbidity so that more people can lead healthy lives for longer and in relation to the domains of the Active Ageing Index it is likely to extend working lives and increase the share of healthy life expectancy beyond the age of 55 years. The annual health checks for people aged 40–74 is likely to increase access to health care services, particularly those supportive services that help people change their lifestyle.

Websites

Smart Life

Foreign Press Center Japan