Our Smoking Prevention Program is going to be the 5th year in 2012.

We started the health class for school children in Kamisu city from October 2 this year.
The aim of this class is to prevent primary school and junior high school students from smoking because Ibaraki prefecture have the third worst smoking rate in Japan.
The male smoking rate is 53.8% (national average 41.75%) .
~K. Katou “Smoke free policy of each 47 prefecture in 2007“~

We teach class with 3 to 4 medical students staying in Kamisu city every week to have training for community healthcare.
By the way, Kamisu city is located about 2 hours east of Tsukuba University by car.

We started to teach this class 4 years ago in Kamisu city, and this is going to be the 5th year.
Year by year the number of schools that want to have our lecture is increasing.
Now, we are giving lectures at 19 schools this year in Kamisu city.

(Naoto Sakamoto)