Yoko Kawamura
Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, Dr. Kawamura graduated from Chuo University Faculty of Law in 1998. She went to the US after working for a company in 2001, she received her Master of Public Health in 2003 and her PhD (in Health Education and Promotion) in 2006 at University of Alabama at Birmingham, School of Public Health. After returning to Japan, she worked as a researcher at Benesse Research and Education Development Center and as a research resident at National Cancer Center, Cancer Control and Information Center, before becoming an associate professor at Kumamoto University from August 2009 to March 2017. From April 2017 to March 2020, she was an Associate Professor at Shizuoka University of Art and Culture, before assuming her current position in April 2020. She specializes in health promotion and health communication based on behavioral sciences, with a focus on practical methodologies in the community and workplace. Recently, she has been involved in intervention research that contributes to solving population issues, organizational capacity building to support smoking cessation, utilizing the Positive Deviance Approach, an problem solution approach, and Liberating Structures, a facilitation tool.