ANN ARBOR—In an effort to assist Japanese families living in southeastern Michigan, a family practice team at the University of Michigan Medical Center’s Health Service offers prenatal classes and primary care health services to Japanese parents through the Japanese Health Initiative.

The U-M’s departments of Family Practice and Internal Medicine developed the Japanese Health Initiative three years ago to provide complete health care services to the more than 6,000 Japanese that the Consulate General’s office says live in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area.

Seonae Yeo, assistant professor of nursing, teaches the prenatal class, and she asks her clients to participate as a couple, a departure from the norm for many Japanese men, she says.

“From the beginning, I have emphasized the importance of two people’s involvement. I ask them to come to the class together,” says Yeo. “In Japan, very few fathers ever enter the delivery room. I ask each couple to come back once after the baby’s birth, and at that time, I ask the father to share his experience with everybody, particularly with other husbands.”

Yeo says the new fathers are quiet and express their experiences in few words, such as “I was moved,” “Now I know how difficult for women to give birth,” “I respect my wife for that.”

In addition, says Yeo, when a baby needs diapering, it is usually the father who shows great skill at changing a diaper. “These are new phenomena to Japanese,” she notes.

The prenatal sessions are held from 10:30 to noon one Saturday a month at the U-M East Ann Arbor Clinic, 4260 Plymouth Road.

The Japanese Health Initiative includes a network of generalists and specialists familiar with the Japanese language and culture, and was spearheaded by Michael D. Fetters, M.D. M.P.H., a U-M Medical Center faculty member fluent in Japanese. Other Japanese Health Initiative staffers are Dolores Mendelow, M.D., who is a pediatrician at East Ann Arbor Health Center; Mariko Foulk, M.S.W., who provides counseling services; and bilingual receptionist Matsuyo Portnow.

The Japanese Business Society of Detroit recently funded Fetters and associates to conduct a series of community interventions to promote mental illness prevention. Many of the clinic’s patients also have participated in a funded project examining the ethical issues in cross-cultural medicine. In addition, many Japanese companies with offices in southeastern Michigan are contracting with the clinic to conduct the physicals for their Japanese executives.