Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Thank you for your interest in the Second China-U.S. Health Summit! The summit is entitled "Healthcare Reforms: Balancing Roles of Government, Market and Professionalism". This is an exciting opportunity for collaboration, creativity, and dialogue.

Last September we held our inaugural China-U.S. Health Summit in Boston, which was a resounding success. This two-day conference covered a wide range of important public health topics such as non-communicable diseases, global approaches to health system reform, human resource development, and health technology. Attendees included Minister Zhu Chen, Assistant Secretary Sherry Glied, and more than 700 international health policy makers, academic experts, and healthcare executives. After the success of the first Summit, Minister Chen Zhu suggested that the second Summit be hosted in China, and Beijing was selected.

The primary goal of the Summit is to bring together health sector leaders from China, the United States, and many other countries around the world to share perspectives and collaborate. The China Initiative at Harvard School of Public Health has been at the forefront of high-level policy dialogues between the United States and China since 2007, and we are expecting this summit to play a pivotal role in this developing partnership. We will examine what progress has been made in China's healthcare reform process, and subsequently pinpoint potential problem areas – as well as propose practical solutions. There will be four major sessions focusing on identifying specific information to be gleaned from Chinese and global experiences, and this information will be distilled in order to inform future evidence-based policy making.

The Beijing Summit is co-hosted by Harvard School of Public Health, Peking Union Medical College and Tsinghua School of Public Policy and Management. We are grateful for the enthusiastic support of the Chinese Ministry of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. We are excited by the impressive set of confirmed speakers and are confident that you will find the presentations and discussions informative and engaging. We sincerely welcome your participation in this Summit to create the most memorable event possible with a long-lasting impact.

See you in Beijing!

Sincerely,

Yuanli Liu, PhD
Director, China Initiative
Harvard School of Public Health