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Background Traditional menstruation practices in Nepal (Chhaupadi in Nepalese) lack scientific support and undermine women’s health. This study aimed to understand the changes in the traditional menstruation practices due to migration from Nepal to Japan. Methods This study included 104 Nepalese women of reproductive age living in an urban area of western Japan. Participants were recruited using snowball sampling, and the method of data collection was a questionnaire survey. To examine how Nepalese women adapt traditional menstruation practices to their living environment, we compared how women followed frequently 17 traditional practices when they lived in Nepal and later in Japan. We examined the relationships among behavioural changes in traditional practices, education level, and caste. Results The frequency of 14 of the 17 traditional practices decreased after the women moved to Japan. Among women who reduced the frequency of traditional practices after moving from Nepal to Japan, the reduction was not associated with educational level or caste of the participants. Conclusions This study suggests that the attitudes towards the traditional menstruation practices change in response to living circumstances. Future studies should focus on determining living environment factors related to behavioural changes in traditional practices.

In the rural area of Nepal, lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are emerging in recent days. We piloted a program model (2017-2019) to protect people from lifestyle-related diseases in a remote village of Kaski district where the health facilities are limited. This program was supported by Japan International Corporation Agency. We aimed to initiate a simple model of health monitoring to reduce the risks of lifestyle-related diseases. Health monitoring (blood pressure and body weight measurement) together with peer education regarding lifestyle-related disease was conducted by trained volunteers on regular bases. One-group pre-test–post-test research design was used to measure the impact of the program on the 104 participants with the age ranging 52±8.99 years in female and 57±7.38 years in male, sampled from the 100 households in the target village, Gairegaon. The double burden of underweight and overweight was observed in the programming community. After the program was conducted for one year, the percentage of people who is in the normal body mass index (BMI) range was significantly increased from 68.2% to 75.9% in total. Similarly, the ratio of normal blood pressure rose up significantly from 40.4% to 59.6%. This program results suggested that the community-led capability approach works effectively with locally affordable cost to change the behavior of people to reduce the risk of lifestyle-related diseases.