Illustration of National Medical Center for Major Public Health Event planning

On December 9th, the Ministry of Education and the National Health Commission jointly launched their Innovation Training Project of High-level Applied Talents in Public Health. A total of 11 institutions across the country got approved, including Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

The purpose of this national project is to cultivate professional personnel in disease control and prevention, and to build a number of high-level specialized schools of public health. It is an key measure to strengthen the training of urgently needed talent in key fields, also an important step to implement the Healthy China Plan.

The 11 institutions with approved projects are: Peking University, Jilin University, Harbin Medical University, Fudan University, Nanjing Medical University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Central South University, Sun Yat-sen University, Sichuan University, Xi'an Jiaotong University and China CDC.

As one of the first six schools of public health established in China, the School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, HUST, was approved the first-level discipline to award the doctoral degree in public health and preventive medicine by the Ministry of Education in 1998. And it became a pilot unit for MPH education in 2002. As a national key discipline, public health and preventive medicine features obvious development distinctions. The school received an A+ in the 4th CUSR and was approved as the "double first-class" construction discipline.

The school has always upheld the values of morality education and served the country's major needs, with the goal of cultivating high-level innovative talents in applied public health and preventive medicine. At present, it has formed a complete talent training system from full-time undergraduates, masters to doctors as well as postdocs, with over 1,000 full-time students currently at school. Over the years, it has produced nearly 10,000 professionals who are now serving leading posts in related industries and departments such as preventive medicine institutions, health administration departments, universities and research institutes at home and abroad.

With the approval of the project, the school would focus on its development of the professional master degree program of public health (MPH), attach greater importance to cultivation of versatile public health talents, and further strengthen its cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control at Hubei provincial level and Wuhan municipal level.

In July, the construction of the first National Medical Center for Major Public Health Event began at Affiliated Tongji Hospital, HUST, which also serves to provide strong guarantees for actively exploring and innovating the education mode of talents and implementing the Innovation Training Project of High-level Applied Talents in Public Health.

Written by: Aoyi Zhang

Edited by: Andrew, Tian Wan

Source: Hubei Daily