With the rapid growth of the Chinese economy and transition from central planning to a more market-oriented structure since the 1980s, private health care providers have gained market share, especially in provision of primary health care, despite legal and administrative obstacles.  To reach the goals for universal health care coverage, access and quality announced in April 2009 as part of China’s new health reforms, effective government stewardship of non-state health care providers will be crucial. This presentation will give an overview of private providers in the grass roots health delivery system in urban and rural China, as well as evidence from field study. Policy trends in stewardship, contracting out and how private providers can better participate in universe health insurance are discussed.

Yan Wang is deputy director of the Disease Control Division for the Shandong Province Health Department, China, and a visiting scholar with the Asia Health Policy Program at the Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center at Stanford University in 2009-2010. She received her Ph.D. in public health from Shandong University and has been in charge of managing rural and urban community health services for Shandong’s 90 million residents for 10 years. Her research interests focus on evidence to improve policies for primary health care, health insurance, and health promotion.

The health sector's successes in Vietnam have been described as "legendary" by international donors, but there is always the other side of the story. One can question the objectivity of reports from the government of Vietnam, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. One can wonder in what areas the health sector has failed, who has paid for a "success story" and at what cost, and how much information is well documented and has been made public. Are there "stylized facts" regarding those aspects of health that have been successfully reformed compared with those where reform has lagged? Given these concerns, how can the research community contribute to improving health policy in Vietnam?

Dr. Truong will share his thought on recent socioeconomic development in Vietnam, discuss key health policy issues, and reflect upon his experiences including a research project in which the University of Queensland collaborated with Ministry of Health of Vietnam. Additional evidence will be drawn from a study of the cost-effectiveness of interventions to reduce tobacco use in Vietnam.

Khoa Truong was a visiting faculty member at the Hanoi School of Public Health and a research fellow at the Health Strategy and Policy Institute in 2008-2009.  Prior to that he spent six years as a doctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation.  His research interests include tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug control policies; the impacts of built environments on health; international health issues; and economic development.

He received his doctorate and master of philosophy in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School and earned a master's degree in development economics from Williams College. A native of Vietnam, he began his career working with NGOs in bilateral and multilateral development projects in Southeast Asia. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and wrote “most outstanding paper” submitted at an AcademyHealth's Annual Research Meeting (acknowledged as the premier forum for sharing the results of scholarship on health services).