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

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser leads a delegation visiting Beijing and Shanghai this month to help develop recommendations for health-care reform in China.

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 begins 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 provides 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 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 follows 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 conference 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 Dr. Lincoln Chen, director of the Global Equity Center at Harvard University’s School of Government and president of the China Medical Board, a grant-making organization, and Dr. Teh-wei Hu, professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health.

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's first day in Beijing is Dec. 8. The trip's itinerary includes meetings by UNC administrators and key Chinese officials, tours of research and technology faciltiies at Chinese universities, conference sessions, and visits to the Great Wall at Simatai and other historic sites.

On Dec. 12, Moeser will spend his last full day in Beijing by delivering 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 travels 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 exchanges with UNC’s department of music.

The Fudan group includes 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 lead 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 year, 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 participate 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. Collaborations include UNC School of Medicine research related to AIDS involving the Chinese Center for Disease Control.