Japanese Research ›› 2025, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (6): 33-48.DOI: 10.14156/j.cnki.rbwtyj.2025.06.003

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Practice and Implications of Japan's Community-based Integrated Care System

HAN Leijuan1, OUYANG Wei2   

  1. 1. School of Humanities and Science, Northeast Petroleum University, Daqing, Heilongjiang 163000; 2. School of Population and Health, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
  • Received:2025-07-16 Published:2025-12-26

Abstract: To address the challenge of an aging population, Japan has gradually developed a comprehensive care system based on specific communities. The Japanese community comprehensive care system adheres to the concept of continuous care, relying on specific community integration resources to provide integrated comprehensive care services including housing, medical care, nursing, prevention, and life support. This system features the integration of services throughout the full cycle and the collaboration of multiple stakeholders. However, it also has shortcomings such as imbalanced coverage across regions and among different groups, pressure on the sustainability of human and financial resources, and barriers to collaboration among multiple stakeholders. The experiences and shortcomings of Japan's community-based comprehensive care system suggest that promoting elderly care can focus on five key points: first, resource integration, optimizing the layout and matching of supply and demand based on living circles; second, policy coordination, using laws and planning to solve fragmentation and implementation gaps; third, stakeholder participation, activating social forces through multi-stakeholder collaboration; fourth, service stratification, prioritizing prevention to precisely match needs; and fifth, continuous care, refining services and connections throughout the life cycle to improve care quality.

Key words: aging, Japan, community, comprehensive care, full cycle, integration

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