Bulletin

Issue: August 2002

People

Global health reform in changing times

Leading international health development researcher, Dr Gerald Bloom, recently was a keynote speaker at a La Trobe University seminar on the difficulties faced by China’s health system during that country’s transition to a market economy.

Dr Bloom is a specialist in Health and Social Change at the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK. He has been involved in health system reform and research in Africa and Asia and is Deputy Chairman of the China Health Development Forum.

He was visiting Australia as an Associate Fellow of La Trobe University’s Institute for Advanced Study, where he collaborated with La Trobe Head of Public Health, Professor Vivian Lin, on a number of international health care studies.

Professor Lin said the seminar aimed to stimulate discussion about how Chinese and international researchers could contribute to the reform process at a time when the Chinese Government was giving high priority to improving the health system, particularly in rural areas. The outbreak of SARS has created further impetus for reform.

Professor Lin consults for the World Bank, UK, Department for International Development, and the World Health Organization on health promotion and health system development. She has also been a member of the AusAID Technical Advisory Group on China’s health sector and is president of the Chinese Medicine Registration Board of Victoria.

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