(photo by Neil Brake)
Symposium to explore ways to enhance China’s rural health system
Vanderbilt Medical Center will host a symposium on rural health care in China on May 30 from 3 to 5 p.m. in 208 Light Hall.
The symposium will conclude a three-week-long rural health care exchange program between Tennessee and China that grew out of Gov. Phil Bredesen's trade mission to China last October.
Forty four Chinese physicians and health officials have spent the past two weeks receiving training in public health management and finance at East Tennessee State University and the University of Memphis, with the participation and contribution of the Tennessee Department of Health and the University of Tennessee.
Next week, May 26-29, they will receive leadership and management training at the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health.
China is in the midst of revitalizing its rural health care system.
The exchange is designed to share “best practices” for improving the basic health and quality of life for people in both countries, said Matt Kisber, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.
The program was organized by Kisber and his staff, the Chinese Ministry of Health and Foreign Loan Office, and by officials of the three Tennessee universities, including:
• Sten Vermund, M.D., Ph.D., and Han-Zhu Qian, M.D., DrPH, of Vanderbilt's Institute for Global Health, and Tom Lloyd of the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health;
• Randy Wykoff, M.D., M.P.H., dean of the ETSU College of Public and Allied Health in Johnson City; and
• Cyril Chang, Ph.D., director of the Methodist LeBonheur Center for Healthcare Economics at the University of Memphis Fogelman College of Business and Economics.
For more information, contact Olivia Manders in the Institute for Global Health at 343-4169 or olivia.manders@vanderbilt.edu.