For three days, March 14, 15, and 18, 2024, a workshop on “Community Assessment” was held at the Kyoto University School of Public Health (KUSPH). The contents of “Community Assessment” was developed by the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study (JAGES), of which Professor Naoki Kondo from Dept. of Social Epidemiology at KUSPH is a member, to promote community-based understanding of the health-related issues and characteristics of the elderly. To foster the “Community Assessment” methods widely applicable to countries in the Asia-Pacific region, we introduced the constituent factors of the “Community Assessment” index, specific calculation methods, and visualization methods using maps, etc. The workshop was held with the aim of providing detailed information on the knowledge gained from the research and examples of its use in multiple municipalities in Japan. This workshop was held in by inviting the officers from the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office and the WHO Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Center), and we also invited two people from Brunei Darussalam, one from the Ministry of Health Brunei Darussalam and another from the University of Brunei Darussalam. There were also approximately 15 participants, including students and faculty members, from KUSPH who participated in this workshop.

In the future, we will continue to spread the concept of “Community Assessment” overseas as one of the measures that will help solve the ageing issues, which is expected to become more and more serious in many countries in the Asia-Pacific region.