[Japanese Model of Asheville Project. Its Overview and Initiative]

The Asheville Project® began in 1996 in Asheville, North Carolina, where community pharmacists, in collaboration with physicians, provide health coaching to patients with lifestyle diseases to accomplish their improved self-management of the disease. The project has now widely expanded across the United States. With periodical coaching by pharmacists, according to the reports of these programs, patients have been reported to show improvements in self-management and laboratory data, including the number of doctor visits, medication adherence and the number of foot examinations. Economically, the total medical costs for this disease have decreased 34% over a 5-year period by complying with the Asheville Project. In implementing this model in Japan, various questions, such as the feasibility for busy pharmacists to expend 30-60 min for meeting individually with patients, effective collaboration between pharmacy and physician, patients' acceptance of support by pharmacists to modify their behavior, etc. had to be answered. Thus, we developed a program entitled, "A Health Coaching Program by Community Pharmacists in a Collaborative Practice," aimed at preventing the aggravation of lifestyle diseases; we evaluated its feasibility for the above mentioned concerns. The content of this coaching program has been prepared with reference to the Asheville Project® and with the support of Kitasato University School of Pharmacy and the Iowa Pharmacy Association, USA. We herein introduce this coaching program, as well as what the pharmacists have learned through this program.