News

Location: 首页» English» News

CCHDS and LonCH workshop on experience of study public health at UK instittions

On 6 November 2014, Peking University China Centre for Health Development Studies (CCHDS) and London Research Group on China Health (LonCH) co-organized a workshop on sharing experiences of studying public health at UK institutions. Presenters and invited discussants, who are still or used to be students, graduates, visiting scholars and faculty members at British institutions exchanged with the audience their study and life experience in the United Kingdom. The event was chaired by Dr. Liu Xiaoyun and Dr. He Li, and was well attended.

 

Zhang Huan and Wu Qiong, both Masters students at CCHDS and graduates of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) on an MSc scholarship provided by China Medical Board, presented in details from the process of applying for the scholarship and the School to the end of the programme. They highlighted the need to be presenting the key understanding of one’s own characteristics and motivation for study at the School during the brief interview. They also shared their term courses respectively on epidemiology and public health (economics stream). On the request of the audience, they compared courses taken at Chinese domestic institutions and at LSHTM. For both epidemiology and health policy and management in particular, the common feeling is that teaching in China is more textbook-based while a longer reading list is required. Lecturers at LSHTM gave more emphasis on the background and meanings of specific terms, while sometimes classes in China is assuming that the students know about the background and starting directly with textbook definition of terms.

One notice from the presentation that the Masters module at LSHTM also provide intense training on applying the knowledge learned. Zhang Huan specifically mentioned her initial feeling of knowledge gap between what was taught in classes in Term One (foundational knowledge) and the problems sets given in Term Two (focusing more on application). She also recalled LSHTM Vice President Prof. Anne Mills’s suggestion to her at that point: “It is when you find yourself challenged that you really learn something new and important.” The push to apply knowledge learn also took place on a daily basis as each lecture is routinely followed by a seminar intended to apply them. Indeed their peer students, who vary in terms of their professional stages, come from all over the world and are oftentimes very experienced, also provides a helpful channel of cross learning and linking practice (in different settings) with the theories and other lecture teachings.

Xu Jin, a research associate at CCHDS and a PhD student at LSHTM supervised by Prof. Anne Mills, shared his work in progress and experience as a PhD in UK. He explained his triple-mixed and nested method on analysing balance between primary care and hospital care in China. Jin also shared his reflections on the PhD study so far. He started his course in London in January 2013, and returned to China for an 11 months field work after finished his upgrading. He pointed out that the PhD experience is very unique in the UK system, with no required courses other than those modules that were considered directly helpful for PhD thesis. Besides there were Transferrable Skills Programmes that PhD students can apply for and external courses that the school provide some funding to attend. Besides these resources PhD students (in fact MSc students also) can approach a wider range of scholars, a few of them might eventually be their advisers providing technical support. The academic relationship between the students and their supervisors seems central, as key academic decisions are all made with the guidance of the supervisor. In the end, Jin suggested that there were five potential gaps in health systems research:

Gap 1: the gap between contemporary system and the longer historical pathway

Gap 2: the gap between one single policy intervention and the wider health system context

Gap 3: the gap between numbers and what the numbers might mean

Gap 4: the gap between theory and practice

Gap 5: the gap between UK and China (which he said might itself be a bridge for the previous four gaps as LSHTM has fostered a multi-disciplinary health system related research capacity within a highly collaborative environment)

Guest discussants also shared their perspectives. Dr. Shi Yuhui, associate professor at School of Public Health, Peking University, emphasized the need to learn how the western world and international society were seeing China, as well as the eye-opening experience of attending various lectures at the London School of Political Sciences and Economics. Her colleague Dr. Wang Yu graduated from the University of Cambridge stressed the need to think out of the confining box commonly existing in the minds of Chinese students. He endorsed the point with his own experience of crossing disciplinary boundary from a geographical department over to public health department which lead to his successful PhD in Geographical Information System in studying access to community health centres. Dr. Yuan Beibei echoed the point with her own experience as a visiting scholar at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine on a sandwich PhD programme. When she was in Liverpool, she took every opportunity including talking directly with the course director to attend the seminars and lectures that she finds interesting and helpful. Zhang Zhang, an MSc graduate from a LSHTM-LSE joint programme of health financing and policy also on the CMB scholarship mentioned that in British classrooms, Chinese students needed to actively participate in discussions. Otherwise, one would be left out and eventually neglected, as everybody is regarded as an independent adult.

Chen Huan, a NGO leader, the China director of the Tobacco Free Kids Campaign, and MSc graduates from LSHTM highlighted that prospective students at overseas institutions should try to learn how the outside world conducted activities with policy impact, rather than be restricted in academic research for publication per se. Yan Li, a PhD student from Imperial College London and a co-founder of LonCH suggested that Chinese students should try to build up a long-term friendship which will foster greater success with joint efforts in later stages. Dr. Liu Xiaoyun summarized the points and also added his experience as a faculty member at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for four years. He mentioned an observation that people clearly demarcated their life from work. His colleagues who collaborated well with him at work rarely went out with him for dinner or visit his family after work or during holidays. People maintained a good pace of life not often sacrificing their quality of life. Even ordinary people like a street cleaner in UK are proud of their identity, and dressed properly. Apparently he enjoyed the feeling of ownership and the personal closeness between colleagues more since he came back to China.

In his presentation, Jin also introduced LonCH, which he co-found with other PhD students from LSHTM, University College London and Imperial College London on studies related to health in China and was later joined by MSc students and visiting scholars based in London. The objective of LonCH as a non-profit organisation is to improve health in China through academic research and to enhance China’s role in global health through academic research, exchange and collaboration.