Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2005

The International Dimension

Alumni health conference in Beijing

A conference attended by 45 alumni of La Trobe University's Master of Health Administration program was held in Beijing on 17 and 18 September.

A number of La Trobe academic staff associated with the Program, including the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Osborne, the Director of La Trobe's China Health Program, Dr David Legge, and the Director of the La Trobe Peking University China Studies Centre, Dr Likun Pei, spoke at the conference.

By the end of this year there will be around 270 graduates of the program which began in 1997. A total of 150 have completed the course at Harbin University in China and 120 have come to the Melbourne (Bundoora) campus for the course which is taught in Mandarin.

The recent conference was for alumni who had completed the course in Melbourne, many of whom now fill senior health administration posts in China.

'Many our alumni have received promotion because of the increase in skills received through our Master of Health Administration program,' Dr Legge said.

The conference examined a number of ways of approaching Chinese health care problems. It also produced the first volume of a book, Health Development: Opportunities and Challenges for China Student Publications and Reports, comprised of papers contributed by the alumni.

Dr Hui Yang of the La Trobe China Health Program organised the conference in conjunction with other La Trobe and Peking University colleagues.