UNC chancellor, delegation to visit Beijing for health care forum with Peking University

Photograph of Bruce Fried, PhD

Photograph of Dean M. Harris, JD

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser will lead a delegation visiting Beijing and Shanghai this month to help develop recommendations for health-care reform in China. Bruce Fried, PhD, and Dean M. Harris, JD, from the School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Administration are part of the UNC delegation.

UNC is co-sponsoring a conference, “Harmonious Development and Reaching Health for All,” Dec. 11-12 at Peking University, one of China’s leading universities, in Beijing hosted by Peking’s Guanghua School of Management with assistance from UNC’s Carolina Asia Center. The conference is the beginning of a long-term partnership between both universities called the PKU-Global Health Forum that will include a similar event in Chapel Hill next year focusing on topics including U.S. health-care issues.

The Beijing conference will provide a forum for scholars from both universities, other researchers, government officials and representatives of international organizations involved in public health, and private health-care companies to discuss and propose health-care reform measures for China. Topics will include national primary-care delivery models, pricing policy reform, policy regulations and quality of care.

“We are excited about the opportunities for enhancing long-standing collaborations through this conference that will help in examining a key issue facing China,” Moeser said. “Health care is a critically important topic in both our countries, and we expect the results of this conference and our long-term partnership to benefit everyone at a time when globalization is so important to the future of North Carolina’s economy.”

Moeser said UNC-Chapel Hill and North Carolina are well-served by engagement with China, which has experienced explosive per capita income growth over the past three decades. China also has become one of North Carolina’s biggest trade partners, and corporations like Lenovo, with its Research Triangle Park connection, are growing in prominence across the Southeast and beyond. Moeser will visit the Lenovo campus in Beijing.

The chancellor’s trip will follow a recent stop in Chapel Hill by Dr. Min Weifang, executive vice president and chairman of the University Council of Peking University. UNC hosted Min at campus events, and he visited Research Triangle Park as well as Duke and N.C. State universities.

Speakers at the health conference will include top leaders from the National People’s Congress and the Chinese ministries of finance, health, and labor and social security, as well as U.S. scholars including Fried and Harris, who will, respectively, be part of a round table panel and present a keynote speech.

RTI International is the major conference sponsor, along with Quintiles Transnational Corp., both multinational corporations based in Research Triangle Park. Other sponsors include the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research, several Chinese government offices, and other organizations including the China Association of Enterprise with Foreign Investment R&D-based Pharmaceutical Association Committee (RDPAC).

Moeser will arrive in Beijing Dec. 8. Activities the following day will include a meeting with Dr. Linna Hao, director of the Division of International Collaboration, National Population and Family Planning Commission, one of the largest social service agencies in China. Participants will include UNC School of Social Work Dean Jack Richman and Professor Shenyang Guo. UNC has worked with the commission for two years, hosting delegations in Chapel Hill to provide training and information on topics including reducing aggressive behavior in elementary school children. A resulting pilot program in two Chinese sites has more than 900 participants.

On Dec. 10, Moeser will visit the Great Wall at Simatai. He and the UNC delegation will attend an opening reception and dinner with leaders participating in the health-care conference, which begins Dec. 11.

Other stops will include Lenovo’s Beijing Innovation Center, Tsinghua University and a tour of Quintiles facilities at Peking Union Medical College. At Tsinghua, Moeser will see a new Center for Logistics and Digital Strategy recently established with UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. Along with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the school and the university has sponsored two conferences on Olympic logistics in advance of the 2008 summer Olympics in China. Activities have included bringing a Chinese delegation to the Atlanta airport to learn about security.

On Dec. 12, Moeser will deliver a speech about the importance of globalization in higher education to faculty and students at Peking University and will receive an honorary professorship, one of the highest honors a Chinese campus pays to international scholars.

Moeser will travel to Shanghai Dec. 13. He will attend a lunch with UNC alumni and others that will include faculty and students from Fudan University’s Journalism School and then visit the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, which has been part of several recent exchanges with UNC’s department of music.

The Fudan group will include participants in a joint project with the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication to provide worldwide online coverage of the International Special Olympic World Games in Shanghai next October. UNC professors Rich Beckman and Xinshu Zhao are leading a team of more than 200 students.

Next spring five students and one professor from Fudan – including some who will meet with Moeser in China – will participate in multimedia and informational graphics classes in Chapel Hill. Next fall, 20 UNC students and two professors will be in Shanghai to take and teach classes and direct more than 100 teams of videographers and editors covering the World Games. Goals include providing access for every parent, friend, classmate and citizen of the world to see the Special Olympics athletes perform.

Globalization is a major theme at UNC this academic year. Next spring, the university will dedicate the FedEx Global Education Center. Next May, UNC will dedicate its European Student Center in London to serve as a base for the Honors Program abroad. Collaborations are growing with the National University of Singapore, where UNC has developed a newly approved joint undergraduate degree program that is unique among its U.S. peers. That program’s launch followed up a visit by Moeser and a UNC delegation to Singapore and Bangkok in 2005.

More than 120 faculty and staff are participating in working groups for China-related topics. The university has signed several memorandums of understanding with collaborators and held joint programs with the Chinese government. Current collaborations include UNC School of Medicine research related to AIDS involving the Chinese Center for Disease Control.

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Related links: http://www.unc.edu/chan/china

Contact: Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593, mike_mcfarland@unc.edu.

School of Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, (919) 966-7467, ramona_dubose@unc.edu.