This month, the Chinese Government publicly announced a long-awaited plan to thoroughly reform its health care system. Through a focus on essential medicines and expanding health insurance coverage for its 1.3 billion people, the government intends to address major challenges the system currently faces and which lead to preventable deaths, impoverishing illness, and large-scale financial losses. To operationalize the plan, policy makers, managers, and analysts within the urban and rural health care systems will require appropriate conceptual frameworks and specific technical skills to address complex medicines policy questions with applied research.
Harvard faculty and their Chinese colleagues have begun to expand the Harvard-based Medicines and Insurance Coverage (MedIC) Initiative to China, hosting the MedIC International Forum on Pharmaceutical Policy Issues in Health Insurance Systems for senior policy makers and a MedIC Course in Pharmaceutical Policy Analysis for decision makers in Beijing urban health systems. We will report on discussions and plans for system change generated during these events.
The long-term goal of this work is to strengthen evidence-based medicines policy decision making in China through training and research.