News

Final Round of CAHHF Commenced - November 2011

The fourth and final round of CAHHF has been decided and implementation is now underway. CAHHF continues to focus on supporting the five priorities of China's Health Care Reform. Round four supports activities in key areas of mutual interest identified by the Chinese and Australian Health Ministers at the high-level health policy dialogue facilitated by CAHHF in April 2011. As the final round, it also involves consolidation of a number of activities from previous rounds in order to maximise outcomes.

The following activities are supported:

Mental health

• Strengthening human resources for the management and treatment of mental health issues according to the capacities of different regions in China. 

Health human resources

• Strategic research on the recruitment and development of certified General Practitioners in order to improve primary health services.

E-health

• Promoting the use of electronic health records in rural community health services in resource-poor rural areas.

Food Safety

• Piloting various training models for food safety supervision staff in rural areas.

Tobacco control

• Publication of a report on the harmful effects of smoking in the Chinese context and piloting of services based on Australian models to support smokers to quit, including a telephone advice service. 

Prevention of non-communicable diseases

• Development of proposed mid-term and long-term action plans regarding multi-departmental cooperation mechanisms for the prevention and management of non-communicable diseases. 

Health financing

• Theoretical research on the importance of health in relation to the China's socio-economic development and on the related level of government responsibility for investments in the health sector, in the context of the evolving market economy in China.

Essential drug system

• Delivery of training on China's recently established essential drug system and development of policy recommendations regarding the strengthening of the system. 

Global health

• Delivery and promotion of global health diplomacy training programs for high-level health staff in China and the Asia Pacific region more broadly.

Public hospital reform

• Development of proposed national payment schemes for public hospitals and their related regulations and technical guidelines, based on the Diagnosis-Related Groups classification.

Community health reform

• Analysis of the experiences of typical cities in which community health comprehensive reforms have been piloted in order to assess current outcomes and to develop policy recommendations to guide future steps in community health reform.

Australian and Chinese Health Ministers Lay Out Priorities for Collaboration - April 2011

Australian Health Minister Nicola Roxon & Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu, 2011

China and Australia have agreed to strengthen collaboration in health following a meeting between Chinese Health Minister, Chen Zhu and Australian Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon. CAHHF helped facilitate the dialogue, which was also attended by senior health officials from China's Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Australian Department of Health and Ageing (DOHA).

The Ministers signed a Plan of Action to continue bi-lateral collaboration in the areas of health systems strengthening, responding to emerging infectious diseases, chronic disease prevention and management and food safety.

Minister Chen summarised the health reform priorities under China's new Five Year Development Plan. He noted that the Ministry of Health will increasingly focus on chronic diseases, such as diabetes and various cancers, as China faces increasing challenges associated with an aging population and changing lifestyles.

Both Ministers noted the successful collaborative work undertaken to date under CAHHF. Minister Roxon encouraged further collaboration using the CAHHF model.

"I understand that CAHHF could develop a project proposal to take forward the outcomes of the dialogue and I look forward to our officials considering this and other new mechanisms for cooperation in the discussions that will follow later today," Minister Roxon said.

Minister Roxon expressed particular interest in short-term collaboration in tobacco control and responding to emerging infectious diseases and long-term collaboration in health financing and e-health initiatives.

The afternoon session involved two fruitful panel discussions between Chinese and Australian health experts. Senior CAHHF Expert Panel member, Prof. Liu Peilong (Peking University), chaired a discussion on chronic disease and mental health, involving influential Chinese health experts, representatives from DOHA and members of the CAHHF Australian Technical Reference Panel. A second session on emerging infectious disease was led by Chair of the CAHHF Australian Technical Reference Panel, Dr Chris Morgan (Burnet Institute) and involved senior Chinese health experts, representatives from DOHA and Australian health experts.