Education and health professionals from a range of disciplines seek alternatives to promote well-being through nature. Shinrin Yoku, originating from Japan, means "forest baths" or "taking in the forest atmosphere" and provides the opportunity to reconnect with nature and its benefits, with great potential in Canada. This brief…

Background: Community health workers (CHWs), often called "health promotion volunteers" in Japan, are individuals who act as a natural helping resource in the community. Aim: This study tested the efficacy of a CHW-based intervention to improve dietary habits among community-dwelling older people in Japan, using a controlled, crossover…

This paper examines the ways in which healthcare professionals interact with patients' family members, and/or colleagues. The data are from healthcare discourses at difficult times found in the manga series entitled Nurse AOI. As the first step, we selected several communication scenes for analysis in terms of politeness strategies. From these…

This article examines how healthcare professionals use encouragement. Focusing on GAMBARU ["to try hard"], forty-one scenes were collected from healthcare manga. Each scene of encouragement was analyzed from three perspectives; the contextual background of the communication, the relationship with the patients and the patients' response…