Center for Global Studies of Culture and Society (SGS) is a World Health Organization collaborating center (WHOCC) for research and training in population, reproductive health and development (WHO code: JPN-78)

Our center has inherited from the Nihon University Population Research Institute (NUPRI) and the Nihon University China and Asia Studies Center (CCAS) the title of a World Health Organization collaborating center. Our institute is the only WHO collaborating center in Asia from the field of population studies.

As a WHO collaborating center in recent years our institution has been working on the reassessment of the role of abortion and family planning in the changing pattern of fertility in Japan, and, in close cooperation with Tokyo University, on preparing and implementing new rounds of the National Survey on Work and Family (NSWF). Recently, we have also undertaken research on the relationship between Japanese women’s labor force participation and their fertility and health, and have been conducting joint research on the causes of male infertility in Japan with International University of Health and Welfare.

Also, population experts from our center have been for decades conducting research on the economic and social effects of fertility decline and population aging and have, as part of that effort, also studying the link between population structural changes on the one hand, and the demand for medical and nursing care and the public and private expenditure on health on the other. Such research on the influence of population aging on health expenditure is of great social importance since grasping health consumption accurately and empirically evaluating policies regarding health contribute to the goal of improving health care systems. Our recent work with the goal of improving health systems includes statistical calculations concerning infant and child mortality in Vietnam.

In assessing the economic effects of population aging on health consumption and expenditure, in determining the ways in which such consumption is financed and in proposing how it could be financed in the future, we have been using a new and powerful methodological tool called the National Transfer Accounts (NTA). Our experts served as leaders in Asia in the dissemination of the knowledge regarding the NTA by training academics and government official in charge of economic planning in China and several countries of South-East Asia, such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, thus contributing to their development.

Our center has recently been redesignated as a WHO collaborating center and from the end of January 2019 has been tasked with implementing the following two activities: 1. conducting a review of semen analysis based on Japanese language publications, and 2. assessing the cost-effectiveness of national contraception programs (in the countries under the jurisdiction of the WHO West Pacific Regional Office) for the purpose of helping the governments expand the contraception method mix in their countries.

Activity 1 implies translating and reviewing Japanese language literature on semen analysis for the purpose of contributing to the creation of the body of evidence that can be used in the forthcoming review of WHO guidelines. Activity 2 concretely means that our experts will assess the quality of the existing data in Cambodia and other West Pacific countries and write a report on the cost-effectiveness of different contraception methods in those countries.