In between site visits today we had delicious lunch at Forte restaurant located in between our first site visit to the Life Innovation Center and our final visit of the day to Kanagawa University’s School of Health Innovation. As a restaurant whose mission is to employ the disabled, Forte is not just your typical lunch spot, and the experience tied into today’s themes of accessibility and accommodation in promoting collaborative work. After learning about Kanagawa Prefecture’s me-byo health campaign yesterday, we were introduced to the Life Innovation Center, a large-scale campus integrating private business, government assistance, and third-party facilitation of shared health, medical, and biotech research and development. After lunch we were welcomed by faculty, staff, and students to the School of Health Innovation, a 9 years young graduate division of Kanagawa University. All the programs and research initiatives we were introduced to ubiquitously supported Kanagawa Prefecture’s governmental goals to create a healthy society in which each entity has a role and purpose in support of broader well-being. The lesson of today, as cheesy as it may sound, is the value of working together to achieve big goals. We are all looking forward to learning more and experiencing the wonders of Japan!
Alyson Dodson
UMBC
M.A. Applied Sociology, December 2024