Abstract

This study aims to propose an alternative approach to public health policy for the elderly. Advanced population aging is accompanied by expanding medical expenditure for them. The major causes of increased medical costs for the elderly are treatments of chronic diseases. According to the DOHaD theory, the cause of diseases is developed in response to the earlier environments, and then, as the lifecourse perspective describes, interacting with the health disadvantages in later, such as aging, leads to the onset of chronic diseases. What matters is that physiological and functional changes are permanent and occur only in the critical period and that the accumulation of health disadvantages proceeds interactively rather than additively. Some studies have shown that adequate interventions in early childhood can mitigate or even reverse the physical and psychological disadvantages among children presumably influenced by adverse environments in the uterus. Given that, we need to build a system that can provide medical, social, and educational support to mothers including pregnant women and children including fetuses.

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