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Cardiac care, smoking, HIV/AIDS and health-care
policies in the United States and China will be among topics of a free
public forum Jan. 30 to Feb. 1 at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill.
Experts at Peking University and other institutions in China and their
UNC research colleagues will present their progress and ideas in
“Health Crises and Disparities: Working Together on Solutions,” a forum
in UNC’s FedEx Global Education Center (Jan. 30) and the George Watts
Hill Alumni Center’s Carolina Club (Jan. 31, Feb. 1).
For details and a schedule, go to http://www.pkuuncglobalhealthforum.org. For campus maps and parking information, visit http://www.maps.unc.edu.
Because China is home to about one-fifth of the world’s population,
partnering with Chinese researchers gives Carolina access to more – and
more varieties of – cases of illness from which to learn, said Myron
Cohen, MD, J. Herbert Bate Distinguished Professor of medicine,
microbiology and immunology, and of public health, at UNC and director
of the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, the
forum’s sponsor.
“Diseases don’t respect borders,” said Cohen, also the associate vice
chancellor for global health in the UNC School of Medicine. “We are
working together to come up with solutions that will help both
countries.”
Besides helping patients, he said, new drugs and products potentially
discovered by Chinese research partners could boost North Carolina’s
economy. That’s because the state’s biotechnology and pharmaceutical
companies could help develop the treatments and market them not only in
the United States – population 300 million – but also in China –
population 1.3 billion. China is one of North Carolina’s biggest trade
partners, said Tom Martineau, China projects manager for the UNC Office
of International Affairs and the Institute for Global Health and
Infectious Diseases.
Forum cosponsors are the research institute RTI International, the
pharmaceutical firm Quintiles Transnational, Family Health
International, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, Research
Triangle Regional Partnership, and the UNC Center for AIDS Research.
Speakers and panelists will include representatives of RTI, Quintiles,
Peking University Hospital, the World Heart Federation, WakeMed Health
& Hospitals of Raleigh, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and
Prevention, and China’s National Center for Sexually Transmitted
Diseases and Leprosy Control.
Peking University Vice President Hai Wen and UNC Chancellor James
Moeser will chair the forum, a follow-up to the inaugural event in
December 2006 when the chancellor led a delegation’s visit to Beijing.
Uwe Reinhardt, an economics and public affairs professor at Princeton
University, will deliver the keynote address. He specializes in access
to health care, controlling its costs and whether spending on health
care impairs the competitiveness of American businesses. N.C. State
Health Director Leah M. Devlin, DDS, MPH, will attend the session.
William L. Roper, MD, dean of the UNC School of Medicine and chief
executive officer of UNC Health Care, and Gordon Liu, chair of Peking
University’s health economics and management department and a former
faculty member in UNC’s School of Pharmacy, will close the forum on
Feb. 1. They will discuss health policy reform in the United States and
China. Liu, a key figure in the reform efforts in China, is principal
investigator on the largest study of urban health insurance ever
conducted in China.
As China’s economy grows, instances of pollution, obesity, smoking and
heart disease have increased, research and news reports show.
Developing countries account for 80 percent of the world’s
cardiovascular and other chronic diseases, and China is the world’s
most populous developing country, according to the World Heart
Federation. Heart disease has risen in tandem with the country’s
breakneck modernization, bringing with it risk factors common to richer
countries: less physical activity, unhealthy diets and smoking, UNC
forum organizers said.
The forum at UNC will feature a comparison of cardiovascular care in
the United States and China by research partners Zhao Dong, MD, deputy
director of the Beijing Institute of Heart, Lung and Blood Vessel
Diseases at Beijing Anzhen Hospital, and Sid Smith, MD, director of the
UNC Center for Cardiovascular Science and Medicine and former president
of the American Heart Association.
Adam Goldstein, MD, a UNC professor of family medicine and director of
the UNC Tobacco Prevention and Evaluation Program, will moderate a
panel discussion on tobacco use in China and the United States.
Panelists will be Blake Brown, professor of agricultural and resource
economics at N.C. State University; Matthew Farrelly, PhD, director of
RTI International’s public health economics and policy research
program; Valeria L. Lee, president of the Golden Leaf Foundation; and
Vandana Shah, executive director of the North Carolina Health and
Wellness Trust Fund.
In China, an estimated 350 million people smoke, according to the World
Health Organization. That’s more than the total U.S. population, where
an estimated 25.9 million men (23.9 percent) and 20.7 million women
(18.1 percent) smoke, according to the American Heart Association.
The paradox of health worries accompanying smoking in China is that the
country offers a market for North Carolina farmers who in large part
have lost their former U.S. customers. Jan 31 speakers will include
Teh-Wei Hu, professor emeritus of public health at the University of
California, Berkeley, who edited the recent book “Tobacco Control
Policy Analysis in China: Economics and Health.”
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For more information, visit these Web sites:
UNC news releases:
Global health forum contact: Tom Martineau, (919) 843-4520,
tmartine@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589
School of Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu
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