The population of Odawara City in 2017 is 193,414, and the percentage of population aged 65 and over is 28.6%. The population of 2025 is expected to be 186,313 and the percentage of population aged 65 and over is expected to be 30.9%. As the population of Odawara City ages, services for the elderly will continue to increase.
From this perspective, Odawara City has implemented policies for the elderly toward the achievement of the goal “Odawara where people value life,” based on the basic principle “The city of hope where people carve out the future”.
In this context, following our policy “Promoting provision of environment where the elderly can be active and lively” and “Reinforcing the support system for the elderly in their communities”, we provide various services for that purpose.
For the elderly to live in the place they have lived, it is important to provide medical, nursing care and welfare services comprehensively, so we are also promoting community-based integrated care system, collaboration between home medical treatment and nursing care, and dementia strategies.
Odawara City is located in the Western Area of Kanagawa Prefecture, where the municipalities have a close relationship historically and geographically. Kanagawa Prefectural Government positioned this area as a “strategic area for improvement of ME-BYO” and has promoted projects to revitalize this area in order to extend healthy life expectancy of the people living in and visiting to the area, through improvement of ME-BYO.
In order to make Odawara City more age-friendly, we will join the projects collaborating with Kanagawa Prefectural Government and other municipalities in this area and aim to extend healthy life expectancy of Odawara City. Also, we will listen to the needs of the elderly, the opinions of citizens and experts, and reflect these factors on policies. And by linking with the comprehensive plan of Odawara City, we will implement age-friendly projects in various fields.
(ME-BYO: Rather than regarding health and illness as being mutually exclusive, the concept of ME-BYO views a person’s mental and physical condition as continuously changing along a spectrum between health and illness).