BACKGROUND Japan is known for its long life expectancy and rapidly aging society that there are various demands of older adults need to be fulfilled with, and one of them is long-term care needs. Therefore, Japan implemented the Long-Term Care Insurance in year 2000 for citizens who are above 65-year old and citizens who are above 40-year old in needs of long-term care services. This study was ...

BACKGROUND With the introduction of long-term care insurance (LTCI) in Japan, more home care services are available for the community-dwelling elderly. To deliver effective home care services, it is important to know the effects of service use. In this study, as the first step to determine this, we sought to describe different home service use in the sustained/improved group and deteriorated gr...

OBJECTIVE Children with neurologic conditions require a variety of services. With this study we examined health care needs and unmet needs among children with neurologic conditions. METHODS Cross-sectional data reported by parents of 3- to 17-year-olds in the 2005-2006 National Survey of Children With Special Health Care Needs were analyzed. Demographic characteristics, health care needs, and...

Changing roles in health care call for patients to share increased responsibility for managing their health. Patients may need additional health-related information to participate more fully in health care decisions. We examined patients' information needs from the perspective of clinicians, educational software vendors, and patients. The most instructive information came directly from patients...

The United States-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI) include the U.S. Flag Territories of American Samoa and Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and three Freely Associated States: the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and the Republic of Palau. These six jurisdictions span four time zones and are separated by over 4,000 m...

Equity in health and health care in America continues to be a goal unmet. Certain demographic groups in the United States-including racial and ethnic minorities and individuals with lower socioeconomic status-have poorer health outcomes across a wide array of diseases, and have higher all-cause mortality. Yet despite growing understanding of how social-, structural-, and individual-level factor...

BACKGROUND Practice management education continues to evolve, and little information exists regarding its curriculum design and effectiveness for resident education. We report the results of an exploratory study of a practice management curriculum for primary care residents. METHODS After performing a needs assessment with a group of primary care residents at Wright State University, we desig...

School nurses are an integral though often underserved population within the health care and education professions. To develop an effective outreach program for this group, an academic health sciences library conducted an information needs assessment of public school nurses in Tulsa County, Oklahoma. An online survey collected perceptions regarding information needs and behaviors, and a focus g...

One area of pediatric care that strongly presents an opportunity for anticipatory guidance and clinical intervention is that of toilet training. Because most toilet training problems presenting to the health care practitioner reflect inappropriate training efforts and parental pressure, providers can, by consulting with parents, elucidate and address misconceptions parents have about the toilet...