February 1, 2012

Authors gathered in Cambridge, UK to discuss content of the forthcoming book.

The flow of people, ideas, epidemics, and institutions across national borders has had significant, sometimes transformational, effects on the history of health in Southeast Asia over the past hundred years. A new CMB project takes a fresh approach to the study of health in this dynamic region by focusing on the shared interests of historians, epidemiologists and other public health practitioners, and policymakers. By looking through the prisms of interaction and exchange, this study will shed new light on how ideas about medicine and health have traveled within and beyond Southeast Asia.

This study is part of a suite of projects that will mark CMB’s hundredth anniversary in 2014. It is being led by Professors Sunil Amrith of Birkbeck University, Tim Harper of the University of Cambridge, and Emma Rothschild of Cambridge and Harvard. A planning meeting took place in Magdalene College, Cambridge, UK in May 2011 and a regional meeting is planned for summer 2012. Transnational Histories of Health in Southeast Asia, the published volume, is scheduled for release in 2014.

January 11, 2012

Authors gather at Endicott House.

2014 marks the 100^th anniversary of the China Medical Board. With a century of engagement in China, several questions naturally arise: What are the historical implications of China’s century-long search to provide health care for its people? What lessons can be learned for the future? Those questions provide the impetus for a CMB project that examines the history of modern medicine and public health in China in the twentieth century. A team of Chinese and international scholars, led by historians Mary Brown Bullock, Chair of the CMB Board of Trustees and Bridie Andrews, Professor of History, Bentley University have launched a project to examine the history of modern medicine and public health in China in the twentieth century.

Authors presented their studies of significant cultural, scientific, political, and economic transitions of the past century at a workshop held at MIT’s Endicott House on December 10-11, 2011. Noted is that life expectancy in China doubled during the twentieth century – one of the era’s great successes – but how have changes in the practice of medicine, politics, or economics catalyzed these advances? Study abroad for medical professionals was an important feature of Republican China and has continued during the era of reform and opening; what impact have these returnees had on their home country? The need for battlefield medical facilities was one driver of the Chinese government’s interest in modern medicine; can traces of this legacy still be seen the current practice of medicine? What were the health system changes introduced with the Communist victory in 1949 and during the opening of the Chinese economy starting around 1980?

September 3-5, 2011

More than 70 participants, including the deans of nine medical universities, attended a CMB Western Rural Health Network Workshop in the capital city of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot, on September 3-5, 2011. Reports on CMB-funded projects in Guangxi, Guiyang, Inner Mongolia, Kunming, Lanzhou, Ningxia, Qinghai, Tibet, and Xinjiang highlighted progress to date in promoting innovative education to prepare rural doctors in these backward provinces of China. Additional presentations focused on collaborative efforts to craft workforce development policy, integrate township-village health services, and devise a three-year curriculum for rurally oriented medical programs.

Rural health is an emerging priority of the Chinese Government. Ministry of Health Deputy Director-General, Jin Shengguo, announced China’s “5+3 General Practitioner program” at the workshop. Government has adopted the ambitious goal of ensuring 2-3 general practitioners per 10,000 population in township clinics by 2020. Peking Union Medical College President Zeng announced at the workshop the launching of the first “training of trainers” for the 5+3 program.

September 1, 2011

At a September 1 Symposium in Tokyo organized by the Japan Center for International Exchange, Lancet editor Richard Horton said the Japan series represents “the greatest concentration of Japanese health expertise ever brought together in a western medical journal.”

Over the past 50 years, Japan has been able to achieve good population health at low cost with improved equity, according to more than 50 contributors to The Lancet’s Japan series (http://www.thelancet.com/japan). The 6 papers and 8 commentaries, published under the theme of “Japan: Universal Health Care at 50,” scientifically analyze Japan’s health achievements, as well as future challenges.

Japan not only leads the world in life expectancy – 86 years for babies recently born – but has registered gains in longevity across all regions and socioeconomic groups. The authors trace the roots of this success to controlling infectious disease and hypertension in the 1950s and 1960s leading to the introduction of universal health coverage in 1961, which gave all citizens equal opportunity to health promotion.

May 6, 2011

CMB Chair Mary Bullock and President Lincoln Chen with new PUMC Vice Presidents.

The histories of CMB and Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) are intrinsically linked: CMB was founded in 1914 by the Rockefeller Foundation to support PUMC’s development. PUMC convened a seminar May 6 to examine the history of PUMC, CMB, and the Rockefeller Foundation. CMB Chair Mary Bullock, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) President and CEO Jack Meyers, and RAC Vice President and Director of Research and Education Jim Smith attended; PUMC representatives included two new vice presidents, Cao Xuetao and Zeng Yixin.

The PUMC archives are not only a rich source of information about the partnership between the medical college and CMB, they also contain data of interest to researchers of Chinese medical education, health sector reform, international exchange, and other issues. CMB awarded a grant in 2009 to enhance the use of the PUMC archives, increase the quality and quantity of preservation work, and strengthen professional development of staff necessary for archival use and preservation. The PUMC archives contain over 6,000 volumes of documents and more than 5,000 pictures dating from 1914.

February 22, 2011

Village doctors: Eight Myanmar doctors being trained in China and three Chinese doctors in training.

CMB President Lincoln Chen and Beijing Office Director Roman Xu spent 3 days touring rural Yunnan Province hosted by Vice President LI Yan and Director LIU Hong of Kunming Medical College.  Ethnically diverse Yunnan province is located in China’s southwestern corner along the border of Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.  Kunming Medical University is a major institution with 13 health sciences faculties, ten affiliated hospitals, and many more clinical and field teaching sites.

Kunming Medical University has received two CMB grants on rural health and is a Chinese partner in a third CMB grant for a network on rural health policy.  One project, underway since 2009, develops model training methods for village doctors in three prefectures, two along the Myanmar border.  Cohorts of 40 doctors in each of the three localities are now in the second phase of their training, scheduled for completion in 2012.  In the two border localities, Myanmar village health workers have joined Chinese workers in the training sessions. 

 February 18, 2011

Kolkata Group

Why are economic gains not translated into social equity? That was a central question of the Kolkata Group’s Ninth Annual Forum, held February 18-19 in Kolkata, India. CMB President Lincoln Chen, who co-founded the Kolkata Group, joined Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and 40 other social scientists, policy makers, NGO leaders, and development experts to examine social equity in India. The Forum discussed and debated the reasons why the benefits of economic growth have not resulted in health security for all Indians.

November 29-December 1, 2010

Major reform is needed in the education of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals if they are to have the competencies needed for the 21^st century, according to the Commission on the Education of Health Professionals for the 21^st Century, Co-chaired by Harvard School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk and CMB President Lincoln Chen, the Commission Report published in The Lancet was launched at a Harvard symposium on November 29-December 1, 2010.

Changes are needed, the authors say, because of fragmented, outdated, and static curricula that produce ill-equipped graduates.  “The problems are systemic: mismatch of competencies to patient and population needs; poor teamwork; persistent gender stratification of professional status; narrow technical focus without broader contextual understanding; episodic encounters rather than continuous care; predominant hospital orientation at the expense of primary care; quantitative and qualitative imbalances in the professional labor market; and weak leadership to improve health system performance.” 

November 23, 2010

The First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research: Science to Accelerate Universal Health Coverage was conducted in Montreux, Switzerland on November 16-19, 2010 drawing more than 1,200 participants from more than 100 countries.  The Symposium, organized by the WHO in partnership with 23 co-sponsoring organizations, focused on how knowledge can be produced, reproduced, and translated for improving health systems in all countries.  Chinese participation achieved a milestone with more than 60 Chinese from mainland China (and many more Chinese living in other countries), organized by the Peking University Health Sciences Center.