The WHO Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Centre – WKC) actively promotes local engagement to showcase its research, encourage collaboration and foster greater understanding of its work within Japan.
In February 2024, WKC hosted a Forum on Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health EDRM) with the Japanese Association for Disaster Medicine (JADM) to promote global, regional and local research collaboration. The meeting was part of the JADM 2024 Conference in Kyoto, Japan, and was attended by around 130 participants.
WKC conducts research and promotes its uptake to ensure that more people will be better protected from the health impact of emergencies and disasters. The Forum highlighted research promotion initiatives underway within WHO, ASEAN countries, and Japan, and a panel discussion explored ways to promote research collaboration ahead of the World Association of Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM) Conference in Tokyo in 2025.
We spoke to a long-standing collaborator of the Centre, Dr Tatsuhiko Kubo of Hiroshima University, about the value of this platform for research collaboration.
What are your views on the Forum?
“The Annual JADM Meeting in Kyoto this year demonstrated the strong willingness of experts in Japan that they will never stop academic inquiry, even amid the national response to the Noto Peninsula Earthquake,” said Dr Kubo.
“In particular, the WKC Forum provided a significant opportunity to discuss universal approaches for academic inquiry, not just at national, but regional and global levels.”
How useful is this platform to further research collaboration?
“WHO has provided guidance on Health EDRM research methodology. This is extremely innovative and important since the most important aspect of academic research is the method, rather than the results.”
“It is also critical that there is a mechanism to reduce cases across member states, since the number of health crises and disasters is limited in each member state. Discussion during this WKC Forum proved the value and necessities of those strategies,” he said.
Will you embark on new research projects or collaboration following the meeting?
“In light of the WKC Forum, JADM has decided to accelerate academic collaboration with colleagues from the ASEAN Institute for Disaster Health Management. I have also decided to launch an international joint research project on health data collection during health emergencies and disasters. I am quite confident that this WKC Forum will be remembered as the starting point for those new research endeavours,” he concluded.