Globalization and information technology have caused many health problems: mental health issues like depression, and lifestyle-related disease like diabetes and obesity. To cope with these health issues, health promotion and education are desperately needed. Convincing policy decision makers to invest in health promotion and education programs, it is needed to show its effectiveness. Health promotion and education professionals are expected to construct evidence of health promotion and education. Most of such evidence has been produced in the US and European countries. Because socio-economic conditions differ between the Asia and Western countries, we cannot depend on such evidence to implement adequate health promotion and education in our region. We must produce and accumulate our own evidence based on Asian perspectives.

This forward-looking resource recasts the concept of healthy cities as not only a safe, pleasant, and green built environment, but also one that creates and sustains health by addressing social, economic, and political conditions. It describes collaborations between city planning and public health creating a contemporary concept of urban governance—a democratically-informed process that embraces values like equity. Models, critiques, and global examples illustrate institutional change, community input, targeted assessment, and other means of addressing longstanding sources of urban health challenges. In these ambitious pages, healthy cities are rooted firmly in the worldwide movement toward balanced and sustainable urbanization, developed not to disguise or displace entrenched health and social problems, but to encourage and foster solutions. Included in the coverage: Towards healthy urban governance in the century of the city“/li> Healthy cities emerge: Toronto, Ottawa, Copenhagen The role of policy coalitions in understanding community participation in healthy cities projects Health impact assessment at the local level The logic of method for evaluating healthy cities Plus: extended reports on healthy cities and communities in North and Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East Healthy Cities will interest and inspire community leaders, activists, politicians, and entrepreneurs working to improve health and well-being at the local level, as well as public health and urban development scholars and professionals.

Health promotion is a key mechanism in tackling the foremost health challenges faced by developing and developed nations. Covering key concepts, theory and practical aspects, this new edition continues to focus on the themes central to health promotion practice worldwide. Social determinants, equality and equity, policy and health, working in partnerships, sustainability, evaluation and evidence-based practice are detailed, and the critical application of health promotion to practice is outlined throughout the book. Beginning with the foundations of this important area, in this new edition the authors then place greater emphasis on the role of power within health and communities. Drawing upon international settings and teaching experience in the global North and South, it finishes with a summary of the future directions of professional health promotion practice. Placing a strong emphasis on a global context, this book provides an accessible and engaging resource for postgraduate students of health promotion, public health nursing and related subjects, health practitioners and NGOs.

There is more to Japanese sport than sumo, karate and baseball. This study of social sport in Japan pursues a comprehensive approach towards sport as a distinctive cultural sphere at the intersection of body culture, political economy, and cultural globalization. Bridging the gap between Bourdieu and Foucault, it explains the significance of the body as a field of action and a topic of discourse in molding subject and society in modern Japan. More specifically, it provides answers to questions such as how and to what purposes are politics of the body articulated in Japan, particularly in the realm of sport? What is the agenda of state actors that develop politics aiming at the body, and to what degree are political and societal objectives impacted by commercial and non-political actors? How are political decisions on the allocation of resources made, and what are their consequences for sporting opportunities and practices of the body in general? Without neglecting the significance of sport spectatorship, this study takes a particular angle by looking at sport as a field of practice, pain and pleasure.

Arguing for life, moral and values education as a bedrock for the original goals of school education, this monograph explores how life and values education is conceptualised and imparted in Greater China. Under a globalized, transnational, and technological world, where there has been an increase in people’s mobility, in information and cultural exchanges, there is also a growing emphasis on personal and professional ethics. Against this context, life, moral and values education has gained attention for its impact on shaping students' characters as future citizens. However, the cultivation of these values is made deeply diversified and complex by varying interpretations of "life education" and "values education" across societies, given that different societies are influenced by different socio-cultural traditions, educational ideologies and religious beliefs. The means and approaches towards life education also vary vastly from formal school subjects, school-based programmes as well as teachers and peers’ role modelling, community services, extra-curricular activities, school discipline, charity work, pastoral care, and school ethos. Recognising this inherent diversity and complexity in the approach to and the dissemination of life education, the contributors to this volume survey the practice of life education in Greater China so far, suggesting that life education is most effective when it is "diversified, dynamic and developmental across contexts". This book will provide the opportunity for engaging in important and serious debates about the future and the values that will underpin it and will prove of special interest to scholars and practitioners working on education policies curriculum development and teacher education in Greater China.

Discusses professional development in several contexts, children's understandings and programs for children. This book should give the reader an idea of the range of work that is being done around the globe. It brings together insider perspectives on early education in different contexts.

This book advocates the application of holistic and humanistic approaches in elderly care and services to achieve the goal of ageing with dignity in Hong Kong and Asia. It responds to the needs of an increasing ageing population that has to deal with related health needs in long-term care, community health and social services, particularly for chronic conditions and psychosocial support. The book consists of three sections on policy and development of aged care, holistic and humanistic care for older adults, and capacity building for ageing with dignity, respectively. Topics include the latest initiatives in aged care, appropriate services and delivery models, lifestyle modification, psychosocial and environmental considerations, professional development, technologies, and social capital. The chapters review and discuss these issues within a global context, illustrated by examples from Asian countries, underpinned by locally based empirical research. Contributors include academics and practitioners from diversified professional backgrounds that include medicine, nursing, pharmacy, traditional Chinese medicine, dietetics, and allied health. The book traverses into territories in the social sciences, life sciences, and sports sciences, while also touching on areas of business and administration, hospitality, law, public policy, and information technology in connection with public health. The contents serve as a topical reference for tertiary studies in ageing and related disciplines such as well-being and are also useful to policymakers, community and public health practitioners, health executives and interns working in areas of policy and practice pertinent to care development, health delivery models, planning, quality, ethics, better health promotion, professional training, and monitoring for older adults.