2012 Vol.61 No.5 p.388 398 The National Health and Nutrition Survey in the promotion and evaluation of health policies: Its role and history as a long-term health-monitoring tool Nobuo YOSHIIKE Kimiko ICHIMURA Department of Nutrition, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aomori University of Health and Welfare Abstract The National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHNS) has been annually conducted according to the Health Promotion Law since 2003, playing an important role in the advancement and evaluation of the national health promotion initiative known as Health Japan 21. Until the enactment of this law, the National Nutrition Survey (NNS) had been carried out according to the Nutrition Improvement Law - - 58-1, Mase, Hamadate, Aomori, 030-8505, Japan. Tel/fax: 017-765-4169 E-mail: n_yoshiike@auhw.ac.jp 388

since 1952. The origins of the NNS can be traced to the nationwide nutrition survey conducted in 1946, covering 9 cities and 27 prefectures, to obtain basic data for the distribution of the emergency food supply during the serious food shortage after the end of World War II. Surveys developed and implemented for health policies can be classified into two categories: surveys that serve as components in the management cycle of specific programs, and surveys that are not specific to a certain program, but collect and analyze important indicators to detect underlying public health problems. The NHNS has played the former role in Health Japan 21 as a part of the Health Promotion Law. The NNS, and currently the NHNS, also played the latter role for over 65 years, identifying yearly changes in the core indicators of many health and nutritional issues throughout Japan. In fact, the primary functions of both survey types are to monitor changes in health and nutritional conditions over a long period of time. The methods and items of these surveys have been altered throughout their history, due to changes in social needs, revisions in the food composition tables, and reevaluation of survey methodologies. While such alterations might have helped in the development of better survey systems, they might simultaneously have contributed to the deterioration of the continuity and comparability of the data. In order to utilize trend data from the NNS/NHNS for health policies, the methodological changes in each indicator must be carefully interpreted. The primary aim of this paper was to summarize changes in the survey methods and indicators across time for this purpose. keywords: National Health and Nutrition Survey, National Nutrition Survey, monitoring, continuity of the data, history (accepted for publication, 18th October 2012) [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] 389

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