Longevity – one of humankind’s all-time goals and desires – turns out to be boon and bane. Japan and Germany are among the countries, where not only individuals tend to get old and older, but the entire society is aging and has to adapt to a substantial demographic change. With a life expectancy of 85 years in Japan and 81 years in Germany and an almost identical average age of 47.2 years of populations in both countries, Japan and Germany share common problems and challenges.
Individual longevity implies an increase of aging-associated diseases, a growing need for age-appropriated environments and living conditions, higher demand of elder care, public health care and pension funds under stress, financial pressure on taxpayers, strain on the labor market and many more issues to be dealt with from medical, political, social, economic and legal points of view.
Both Keio University/Tokyo, and University of Cologne have established “Longevity/Aging” as a transversal topic of interdisciplinary research, to which scholars and scientists from several disciplines contribute cutting-edge research. Both Universities dispose of strong research centers in Life Sciences and in Social Sciences dedicated to Longevity- and Aging-associated issues.
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This joint lecture series will present some of their results in a comparative Japanese‑German perspective. Each lecture will be held jointly by a German and a Japanese expert, giving insights into ongoing or recently completed research projects. Students in both countries are invited to interact and actively participate in the discussion by posting comments and questions during the lecture.
While being the first intercontinental joint lecture series with one of University of Colognes “Global Network Partners”, this seminar is also a pilot project introducing digital tools into international teaching cooperation.
Lecture coordinator: Dr. Johannes Müller
The sessions of this lecture series are held in English by two lecturers each time – one from Tokyo and one from Cologne – brought together via live broadcasting, followed by a Q&A.
Today, Keio University is playing a leading role in the academic world, attracting highly talented students and researchers from home and abroad. Looking ahead, it endeavors to make further contributions to society, strengthen its international reputation, and solidify its position as a world-leading research university (source: https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/about/).
Cologne:
From its establishment in 1388, the University of Cologne has been a center of science and scholarship in Europe. Today, it is one of the leading German research universities. We offer an exceptionally broad and diverse subject base to our students and encourage them to follow their own academic interests and to develop both intellectually and personally. We are firmly committed to the advancement of human knowledge through basic research, but also have an eye on transfer and application in the real world. (Professor Axel Freimuth, Rector (https://www.portal.uni-koeln.de/sites/international/aaa/INT/INTpdf/016_Imagebroschuere.pdf)
This lecutre series is an expansion of the Keio-Cologne collaboration in this field of research. Early in 2018 CECAD and Keio University already held a symposium on aging and longevity.
October 31, 2018 – Opening | Skin Barrier and Its Homeostatic Mechanisms
Opening
Outlook: Scope and Sessions of the Lecture Series Representatives from Keio/Cologne Universities
Skin Barrier and Its Homeostatic Mechanisms
Masayuki Amagai, Professor of the Department of Dermatology, Keio University Carien Niessen, Professor of the Department of Dermatology and CECAD, University of Cologne
November 7, 2018 – Aging Successfully and Productively
Impacts of Retirement and Working Hours on Health Outcomes
Colin McKenzie, Faculty of Economics, Keio University
Colin McKenzie is currently a professor in the Faculty of Economics at Keio University .Professor McKenzie graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the Australian National University in 1980 and obtained a Ph.D. in economics and econometrics from the Australian National University in 1986. Before coming to Keio, he taught at the Faculty of Economics and Osaka School of International Public Policy, both at Osaka University. He specializes in applied economics.
Diversity of Lifestyles – Living Successfully till Very Old Age
Luise Geithner, Investigator, “NRW 80+” Study, ceres, University of Cologne
Luise Geithner, M.A., studied Sociology and Economics at the University of Jena (B.A.) and Socioeconomics at the University of Hamburg. After her graduation she was working as a research associate at the University of Applied Sciences Ludwigshafen in a project about outpatient care in rural areas of Germany and as associate lecturer at the University of Heidelberg. Since 2016 Luise Geithner is research associate in the project NRW80+ at ceres. Her research interests are in the field of social inequality, sociology of aging and quality of life. She currently works on her PhD project about the diversity of lifestyles in very old age.
November 14, 2018 – Advances in the Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders
Masaru Mimura, Professor of the Department of Psychiatry, Keio University
Kai Vogeley, Professor of Neuropsychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Cologne
November 21, 2018 – How to Care for the Elderly?
Challenges for Therapy and Care in Geriatric Patients
Cristina Polidori, Professor of Ageing Medicine, Head Ageing Clinical Research, Dept. II Internal Medicine, University Hospital of Cologne
Aging in Place: Home Health Care for the Elderly in Japan
Satoko Nagata, Professor of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care, Keio University
November 28, 2018 – Disease Prediction of Neurodegenerative Disorders
Disease Modeling of Neurodegenerative Disorders
Hideyuki Okano, Professor of the Graduate School of Medicine, Keio University
An Ethical Framework for Information, Counseling and Understanding – Prediction of Alzheimer’s Disease by Biomarker Diagnostics
Carolin Schwegler, Project Manager, “PreDADQoL” Study, ceres, University of Cologne
December 5, 2018 – The Cost of Health
Healthcare Expenditure in Japan and Other Developed Countries
Yoko Ibuka, Professor of the Department of Economics, Keio University
Yoko Ibuka is an associate professor of economics at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. She is interested in a broad range of topics in health economics, focusing on understanding health-related behavior and exploring effective and/or efficient public health policies. Her expertise includes conducting empirical analyses on individual and group decision making on interventions against infectious diseases and the evaluation of public health policies. Her recent research also extends to the estimation of health expenditures in Japan using administrative data to shed light on the micro-level structure of healthcare costs. She obtained a BA and an MA in Economics from Keio University, and a PhD in Economics from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Prior to joining Keio, she held the following positions: as postdoctoral researcher at the Yale School of Public Health, assistant professor at Hitotsubashi University, and associate professor at Kyoto and Tohoku Universities.
Just and Effective Health Care – State-Sponsored Health Insurance Systems and the Use of Resources
Björn Schmitz-Luhn, General Manager of ceres, University of Cologne
Bjoern Schmitz-Luhn, b. 1978, studied Law in Cologne and Phoenix, USA, from 1998 to 2002. He then served as a court trainee at the Cologne Court of Appeals, and took positions abroad at the Department of Public Safety in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. He has been admitted to the Bar since 2006.
From 2002, he has been working as a Research Associate and Fellow, and later as an Academic Councilor, at the Institute for Medical Law at the University of Cologne. There, he participated in various interdisciplinary research projects on medical law, including the German Science Foundation’s research group on prioritization in medicine. In 2014, he was made a doctor of legal science on the grounds of his monography on equity in health care, which was also awarded the A. Laufs prize for dissertations. His publications include legal and particularly interdisciplinary treatises on current topics of medical law and health care. He is an adjunct professor for medical law at the University for Economics and Management (FOM) in Essen, Germany.
Since 2015, he has been the General Manager of ceres, heading the office and coordinating the operative research activities of the center.
December 12, 2018 – Cardio-Metabolic Memory and DNA Repair/Epigenetic Regulation
Hiroshi Ito, Professor of the Department of Medicine,Keio University
Thomas Benzing, Professor of the Department of Internal Medicine, Nephrology and CECAD, University of Cologne
December 19, 2018 – Technology to Support the Aging Society
From Wearable Assistive Gears to Stimulating Stroke Patients’ Brains
Junichi Ushiba, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University
Ambient Assisted Living for the Elderly – Between Empowerment and Restriction
Christiane Jannes, M.A., lnvestigator, “Perf-ICF” Study, ceres, University of Cologne
Christiane Jannes completed her bachelor's degree in Health Economics at the University of Cologne and her master's degree in Medical Management at the University of Duisburg-Essen. From 2011 to 2016 she worked as a student/research assistant at ceres. Since June 2016, she has been a research associate and is, inter alia, investigator of projects focusing on digitization in health care and health services research. Her research interests include digitization in healthcare, the care of premature infants and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).
January 9, 2019 – Living Successfully in an Era of Aging
A State-Wide Study on People over 80 Years of Age
Roman Kaspar, Project Manager and Investigator, “NRW 80+” Study, ceres, University of Cologne
Dr. Roman Kaspar is a Postdoc at the Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health (ceres) at the University of Cologne and the coordinator of the working group on Quality of Life and Subjective Well-Being of the Very Old. He earned his PhD in Psychology at the Institute of Gerontology at the University of Heidelberg. He has a strong background in environmental aging research and a profound interest in quantitative research methods. His contributions include assessment approaches to quality of life in dementia, competence assessment in geriatric care, subjective aging and perceptions of home and neighborhood.
Labor Force Participation of Older People in Japan
Atsuhiro Yamada, Professor of the Department of Economics, Keio University
Dr. Atsuhiro Yamada is a labour economist and is currently Professor of Social Policy at Keio University (Tokyo, Japan). Formerly he worked for National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as an economist. He is one of the authors of The Economics of Older Workers in Japan (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbun-sha, 2004). He has written on the effect of various Japan’s public policies related to the older workers and on the income distribution of older people. He is also a member of the Social Security Council in Japan.
January 16, 2019 – Staying Healthy over the Course of Life
Driving Clinical Knowledge from Trials and Cohort Studies
Hiroaki Miyata, Professor of the Department of Health Policy and Management, Faculty of Medicine, Keio University
How to Deal with Risks – Health and Risk Literacy
Saskia Jünger, Coordinator Key Research Area “Health Literacy in Complex Environments”, ceres, University of Cologne
January 23, 2019 – Living Long and Well: Quality of Life and Well-Being of the Very Old
Changes in the Activities of Daily Living of Old People
Takahiro Hoshino, Professor of the Department of Economics, Keio University
Measuring Quality of Life in the Very Old Age – A Challenges and Potentials Based Model
Anna Janhsen, M.A., M.Ed., Coordinator Key Research Area “Ageing and Demographic Change, and Investigator, “NRW80+” Study, ceres, University of Cologne
Anna Janhsen studied Catholic Theology, Philosophy / Applied Philosophy, British and American Studies and Pedagogy in Münster and finished her studies in 2013 with the degrees Master of Education (1st state examination for teaching in secondary schools) as well as Master of Arts (Major: Medical Ethics). After two years working as a research associate at the University of Münster and additional teaching assignments at the Luther College Decorah, Iowa (USA), and the University of Kassel, she joins the project NRW80+ at ceres as a research associate in 2015. Her research interests are in the fields of medical and applied ethics, phenomenology, medical, philosophical and theological anthropology and sociology of the body. In addition, she currently works on her PhD project on the role and function of spirituality for well-being of the oldest old as part of the Interdisciplinary Program Health Sciences (IPHS) at the University of Cologne.
January 30, 2019 – Declined Cognitive Function of Senior Citizens
Recent Findings on Alzheimer’s Disease
Frank Jessen, Professor of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cologne
Encouraging the “Work” of People with Dementia
Satoko Hotta, Professor of Graduate School of Health Management, Keio University