Graduate School

Nurturing outstanding professionals in health preservation, healthcare, and welfare

Due to Japan’s low birthrate and its rapidly aging population, progress in medical technology, the advancement of globalization, and the diversification of values, we are under pressure to review our systems for the delivery of preventive healthcare, and health and welfare. The response to these social needs requires motivated human resources with fundamental research skills and interdisciplinary knowledge in the nursing sciences as well as the ability to develop theories, assistive technology and systems capable of addressing the challenges we face for the future. Our Master’s Course of Nursing Science provides opportunities for education and research with the goal of cultivating human resources capable of leading innovation and the search for practical solutions in nursing science. The Broad Nursing Science Course offers classes that nurture professionals with the knowledge and practical skills essential for national public health nursing examinations.

1. Fundamental Nursing Science Course

The focus of this course is the nursing theory that forms the foundation of various nursing practices and human care as expressive skills. We provide education and research from various perspectives with the aim of establishing evidence that supports theories, principles and practice as a basis for the scientific and theoretical development of nursing science.

2. Developmental Nursing Science Course

The aim of this course is the cultivation of leaders with a combination of practical, research and educational skills in the areas of nursing science that support lifelong health.
In the area of maternal nursing science, we are aiming to establish a special maternal nursing science to pursue a methodology of the care for women and their families and a system to support the associated practices from both of theoretical and practical sides.
In the area of adult nursing science, we are providing education and research based on an interdisciplinary approach from both theoretical and practical perspectives to pursue creation of a care system especially in the fields of care for patients with chronic diseases and with cancers and circulatory diseases as well as those in a perioperative period.
In the area of adult nursing science, we are providing education and research based on an interdisciplinary approach from both theoretical and practical perspectives to pursue creation of a care system especially in the fields of care for patients with chronic diseases and with cancers as well as those in a perioperative period.
In the area of gerontological nursing science, we are aiming to establish a special gerontological nursing science to pursue a methodology of the care for elderly people and their families and a system to support the associated practices from both of theoretical and practical sides.

3. Broad Nursing Science Course

This course seeks to cultivate leaders capable of applying practical and research skills in the area of community health nursing (public health nursing, home nursing) and mental health nursing science).
In the area of public health nursing science, we pursue a methodology, evaluation and system for innovative care dealing with health problems in the area of public health nursing and home health nursing. To obtain candidacy of the national public health nursing examinations, students study public health nursing, epidemiology, public health statistics, Health and Welfare Administration and Finance, etc. to build practical skills and policy proposal abilities.
In the area of mental health nursing science, we seek mental healthcare based on an interdisciplinary approach from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

Seeking to prevent and improvement lifestyle diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia, which have become increasingly problematic in recent years, we conduct epidemiologic research in workplaces and in the community, examine the relationship between dietary habit and disease, and develop functional foods. Students work to establish methodologies using biochemistry and molecular biology, and to solve vocational and health issues using the established methodologies.
Our master’s course offers two courses, Fundamental Nutritional Science and Food Nutritional Science.

1. Fundamental Nutritional Science Course

This course focuses on research and education aimed at understanding the series of life processes from nutrition/ food intake to metabolism at the genetic, molecular, individual, and group level, and build capabilities in the development and expansion of unknown theories. In this course, students will discover new physiology of physiologically active substances generated through the lipid metabolism and protein using cutting edge biochemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology technologies. Students also work to clarify the relationships between inflammatory disease, arterial sclerosis, and the deterioration of brain function caused by aging. Furthermore, students conduct applied research including the development of management tools that allow the use of results in the alleviation of the symptoms of allergies and in the nutritional management of lifestyle diseases, including cancer and dementia. Through education and research, this course aims to cultivate leading managerial dietitians capable of linking fundamental nutritional science to clinical practice and research to play active roles in the field of nutritional science at educational and research institutions.

2. Food Nutritional Science Course

In recent years the consumers and producers are showing more interest in information on maintaining the safety and effectiveness of food, information about the establishment of laws regarding functional food such as Food for Specified Health Uses and Food with Functional Claims, and information such as social issues concerning food safety, including food poisoning. According to these social background, this course provides education and research aiming at the discovery of new functional food compositions and the development of its material using natural product chemistry, food science, and molecular genetic approach based on nutritional science, and besides at cultivating evaluation method for food safety based on solving cause and preventing food poisoning and searching for food material having safety and high-functioning for the purpose of health enhancement and disease prevention. This course aims to nurture human resources capable of taking a leading role in food-related companies, educational research institutions, and administrative agencies as experts in nutrition and food with both exuberant creativity and problem-solving abilities as well as highly specialized knowledge and skills in the field of nutritional science involving research and development of functional food.

The super aging society of the 21th century requires social system design principles and methodologies for the realization of physically, mentally, socially healthy and affluent lives and the improvement of quality of life through the human lifecycle, with or without disease or disability. Our Master’s Course of Health and Welfare Science is promoting research into true lifelong welfare centered on human health. Accordingly, the master’s course offers courses oriented toward the three areas mentioned below to provide opportunities for education and research through the pursuit of the respective specialties and mutual collaboration: 1) theorization of collaboration and integration between health, welfare and medical services, the establishment of health and welfare assistance policies and pursuit of a social adjustment theory in light of the characteristics of disabilities; 2) development and theorization of clinical technology and care management to achieve the well-being of children, the disabled and the elderly, including pursuit of concrete and practical approaches; 3) pursuit of theories and approaches which lead to health and welfare practices based on the scientific analysis of mental/ physical characteristics related to adaptive behaviors by a variety of people, including children, the disabled and the elderly; and 4) pursuit of theories and practical approaches regarding infant and child education.

1. Health and Welfare Policy Course

This course systematically analyzes the actual status of health and welfare assistance for children, the elderly and disabled with a focus on the various issues that arise in a society with a low birthrate and an aging population, and the formation process of a long-lived society.
Furthermore, to respond to requests for the establishment of a care system that corresponds to health maintenance, disease and disability through collaboration among health, welfare and medical services, this course provides education and research required to pursue health and welfare assistance policies required by government agencies and institutions along with planning and evaluation.

2. Social Work and Service Course

This course helps students acquire the interdisciplinary skills and advanced specialized knowledge needed to provide assistance activities to individuals with physical, mental or social problems. Keeping the fact in mind that the qualitative aspects of such activities have been brought into question due to past quantitative responses, this course provides education and research required for the development and practice of assistance technology necessary for local governments, including medical institutions, facilities for disabled adults/children, nursing homes and child welfare institutions.

3. Health Related Social Service Course

There is a growing need for health and welfare assistance that fits each stage of the life cycle. Satisfying this need requires the ability to analyze activities in the context of the living environment and the characteristics of individual disabilities. This course provides education and research required to develop objective evaluation methods for physical and psychological functions to promote adaptation to the environment by disabled adults/ children and the elderly, and the implementation and development of methods for research and practical situations.

4. Child Education and Science Course

With the environment surrounding children changing dramatically due to the declining birthrate and increasing numbers of women entering the workforce, providing education that nurtures children’s potential, and supports their sound physical, psychological and social growth has become even more important. This is designed to equip students with specialized knowledge and methodologies that allow them to identify and address practical issues in child science and education as they become ready to pursue careers in advanced research and education.

In a local society which is facing the development of low birthrate and an aging population as well as becoming complex and diversified, the urgent problem is to improve the health and welfare service infrastructure appropriate for such a society in order to realize a truly affluent society of greater welfare. Therefore, our university has been conducting more specialized education and research in the faculty of health and welfare science and the Master’s Courses of the Graduate School based on the basic principle of “Defending Human Dignity and Enhancing Welfare” to cultivate individuals who can play a role as a driving force in the field of health and welfare science.
In addition to this, while aiming to construct an academic stronghold for further deepening of health and welfare science including maintenance and promotion of local citizens’ health, it is also important to cultivate educators and researchers with high level views so as to be able to offer solutions to various problems concerning health and welfare. Therefore, this doctorate course provides education and research from multiple angles utilizing the specialties of each concentration, nursing science, nutritional science and health and welfare science.

【Nursing Science Concentration】

Nursing specialized personnel must recognize variously and rapidly changing social circumstances and find a method aimed at maintenance and promotion of people’s health as well as prevention and recovery from diseases. For this reason, they must clarify arising phenomena and actual care in light of the historical transition of the concept concerning health and nursing and through nursing practices. This concentration provides education and research to develop a nursing system and care practices and also to contribute to improve nursing quality which are corresponding to various problems of patients with chronic disease or cancer and their family members as well as care needs of elderly citizens.

【Nutritional Science Concentration】

As Japan has become an aging society, we need to solve various problems on food and health in order to keep people away from chronic disease including lifestyle disease and to maintain and promote our health. This concentration conducts education and research aiming to ascertain nutritional phenomenon accompanied by meal from life science approach and apply to prevent disease in each process from primary to tertiary prevention. Research field ranges over exploring new functional food component and pursuing food safety, investigating the role of metabolic control system including lipid metabolism in chronic disease, and investigating control system in central nervous system of nutrition as a life phenomenon.

【Health and Welfare Science Concentration】

In a society of low birthrate and an aging population, clarification of health and welfare-related problems from the viewpoint of social welfare and health science contributes to the improvement of the quality of human health and life. This concentration targets mainly on children, disabled people, disabled children and elderly people and conducts education and research concerning their independence. The research fields are about (1) a theoretical pursuit of children’s sound growth and the concept of guaranteeing ability development as well as a review of methodology concerning childcare/development support including support for disabled children; (2) a theoretical pursuit and a study of methodology concerning an evaluation method of physical, intellectual or mental disability and the associated independence support; and (3) a pursuit of relationship between physical and cognitive changes associated with aging as well as a review of methodology to promote maintenance and enhancement of health of the elderly.