China faces a daunting array of new health challenges: non-communicable diseases, environmental hazards, and mental health. Managing these new health threats requires not only traditional individual-level medical care, but also robust population-based public health delivery in the form of disease prevention and health promotion.

Researchers at Guangxi Medical College have found, through their recent health surveys in two counties, that investment in health care services is increasing and accessibility to health care is also improving. However, both the quantity and quality of health workers will need to be dramatically increased in order to meet the people’s demand for health care services.

Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand visited Peking Union Medical College campus and CMB offices on April 6, 2012 to strengthen historical ties between China and Thailand in health.

A new CMB project takes a fresh approach to the study of health in this dynamic region by focusing on the shared interests of historians, epidemiologists and other public health practitioners, and policymakers. By looking through the prisms of interaction and exchange, this study will shed new light on how ideas about medicine and health have traveled within and beyond Southeast Asia.