China is simultaneously experiencing dramatic epidemiologic and demographic transitions as well as an ambitious reform of its national health system – challenges that call for a new model for health promotion and disease prevention, one that builds on evidence-based systems for health financing, workforce development, technology, and service delivery. These trends strengthen the role for health policy sciences (HPS), which integrate interdisciplinary knowledge from fields such as clinical medicine and public health, economics and ethics, and evaluation methods combined with modeling and organizational theory.

CMB initiated its HPS program for China in 2008, and its grant-making over the past eight years has aimed to build a community of medical researchers who can produce the knowledge, evidence, and monitoring and evaluation to improve the design and management of China’s national health care system. HPS provides the “intelligence” to continuously improve China’s national health care system by underscoring what works, what is not working, and what and how the system can be improved. Working through its long-standing relationships with medical schools, CMB’s strategy has bene to build the capacity of both individual scholars and institutional units, augmented by productive promotion and research.

CMB’s programs and grant-making are addressing institutional capacity building, through its support for Collaborating Programs; next generation scholars, through the Open Competition awards, Westlake Youth Forum, and other initiatives; and promotion and research, through support for the Westlake Forum, The Lancet China Series, and other efforts.