China Health Review (CHR) - China Health Policy and Management Society (CHPAMS)

Chen, Zhuo

 
 
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PAGE 1 EMPLOYEE NEWSLETTER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Improving population health and eliminating health inequity are of 
growing importance to China. Anyone who opens an online Chinese 
news portal are likely to stumble on headline news related to health, be 
it mental health (the series of suicides among Foxconn workers), or food 
safety (contaminated baby formula), or health systems (the new rural 
cooperative medical insurance). Existing news portals and online 
communities rarely offer an opportunity to examine the social and 
economic roots of these problems or issues, to discuss the possible 
consequences and policy implications, or to debate on potential 
solutions. The need to establish a forum for discussions and reviews, and 
to provide a portal for  health research, policy and practice updates in 
China is noted by members of the nascent China Health Policy and 
Management Society (CHPAMS). And voila! You are reading the very 
first issue of China Health Review -- the official magazine of the 
CHPAMS!  
 
China Health Review, hereafter referred to as The Review, is devoted 
to discussions of population health issues in China. It is a collective 
effort of many members of CHPAMS, of which the brief history will be 
laid out by Dr. Jian Li later in the section About CHPAMS. 
 
A key component of the Review is an overview on a population health 
topic from a subject expert. In this issue, Dr. Youfa Wang of Johns 
Hopkins University brings us a thought-provoking review on the 
emerging obesity epidemic in China. As China is going through an 
economic transition, nutrition and epidemiology transitions are to 
follow. The direct and indirect consequences of such changes are 
discussed in the section Topical Review. 
 
During the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, an 
NBC commentator had the following comment on the amazingly 
synchronized drum and moving block performances powered by 
thousands of actors. "They did it with people! ... It's unbelievable." Yes, 
people is the immense resource that was harnessed at the ceremony, 
has been harnessed in the everyday lives of human kind, and will be 
harnessed in the process of making Chinese people healthier and 
stronger. We had the honor to interview Dr. Lincoln Chen, President of 
the China Medical Board, on the issue of human resources for health. 
Readers can find his incisive comments and visions in the Interview 
section. 
EDITORIAL 
Editor-in-Chief 
Zhuo (Adam) Chen, PhD  
Editors 
Feijun Luo, PhD 
Xuezheng Qin, PhD 
Zheng (Jane) Li, PhD 
Contributors 
Jian Li, PhD MS  
Youfa Wang, MD PhD 
CHINA HEALTH REVIEW 
 
A magazine of 
     The China Health Policy and Management Society 
VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1 
August 2010 
Copyright © 2010 by 
The China Health Policy and 
Management Society 
Contact us 
ChinaHealthReview@gmail.com 
 
Visit us 
www.chpams.org 
 
 
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PAGE 2 
In a world with zillion pieces of information swooping around, you 
probably do not have time to read every piece of news or every 
scientific article. Rather, you will probably like the contents in Research 
Twitter, which summarizes academic papers on China's health issues, 
and Policy and Practice Updates, which provides you latest news on 
health policy and practice in China. In this issue, we have summarized 
recent research papers on population health topics in China and 
updates on essential drug system and public hospital reforms.  
  
The last section, News and Announcements, brings you event news, 
information calls, and announcements that are relevant to China's 
health issues. We wish you would start to think about contributing to 
the Review. We also hope the announcements we collected are 
useful for your research and career. 
 
Bon reading!  
 
 
 
A Brief History of the China Health Policy and Management Society 
 
As its economy boomed in the past several decades, China is now 
facing both huge opportunities and massive challenges to improve its 
health care system, and ultimately, improve the health of its people.  
The fragmented health system, significant disparity in health status 
across different sub-populations, ongoing epidemiological transition, 
and the worsening environmental condition, etc., point to an 
immediate need for a large-scale health system reform. The success 
and sustainability of this historical reform hinges on a thorough 
understanding of fundamental issues in China’s health care system, 
and the emerging of a generation (or generations) of well-trained 
researchers and professionals equipped with needed skill sets to tackle 
such issues.   
 
CHPAMS was founded for this exact reason. In 2008, with the support 
from China Medical Board (CMB), an independent U.S. foundation 
that aims to advance health in China and other Asian countries, a 
group of overseas Chinese young scholars from several top U.S. public 
health schools and research institutes gathered together and founded 
the China Health Policy and Management Society (CHPAMS) in 
Cambridge, MA. As an independent nonprofit organization, CHPAMS 
was founded with an overarching goal to improve the health of 
Chinese people through advancing population health research in 
China. In particular, it aims to foster academic exchanges and 
collaborations among health scholars from academic communities in 
China and overseas, to facilitate young scholars who are working or 
studying overseas to return to work at China, and to help building 
health research capacities in Chinese institutions.  
 
In February 2009, being still a very young organization, CHPAMS 
selected about ten young health scholars to participate in the Second 
West Lake Forum on Health Policy in China, a conference funded by 
CMB and hosted by Zhejiang Medical University.  This conference 
 
 
Jian Li, PhD, is an 
Economist at Cornerstone 
Research. She earned a 
BA in Economics (Renmin 
University of China, 2000), 
MS in Economics 
(Carnegie Mellon 
University, 2003), Master in 
Public Policy (Carnegie 
Mellon University, 2004), 
and PhD in Economics & 
Public Policy (Carnegie 
Mellon University, 2007).   
Her research fields include 
health economics, health 
policy and applied 
microeconomics. She is 
the recipient of the first 
Victor R. Fuchs Research 
Award sponsored by 
RAND Corporation in 2007.  
Email: 
jianli.cmu@gmail.com 
 
Selected CHPAMS 
Planning Committee 
members 
Zhuo (Adam) Chen, PhD MS 
Jian Li, PhD MS 
Zheng (Jane) Li, PhD 
Chenhui Liu, MD MPH 
Feijun (Frank) Luo, PhD 
Xuezheng Qin, PhD 
Lu Shi, PhD 
Lingling Zhang, MS 
Shufang Zhang, MS 
Yusheng Zhang, MD MPH ABOUT CHPAMS 


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