This event is part of the Asia Health Policy Program's 2021-22 Colloquium series "Aligning Incentives for Better Health and More Resilient Health Systems in Asia”

Three prominent demographers discuss China's demographic change with insights from the seventh national census. Topics include the pace of urbanization, the more balanced sex ratio, increasing educational attainment, population aging, potential impacts of the pandemic, and recently announced changes in family planning and retirement policies.

Wang Feng is professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and an adjunct professor of sociology and demography at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. He has done extensive research on global social and demographic changes, comparative population and social history, and social inequality, with a focus on China. He is the author of multiple books, and his research articles have been published in venues including Population and Development Review, Demography, Science, The Journal of the Economics of Aging, The Journal of Asian Studies, The China Journal, and International Migration Review. He has served on expert panels for the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and as a senior fellow and the director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy. His work and views have appeared in media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Guardian, Economist, NPR, CNN, BBC, and others.

Cai Yong's research focuses on China's one-child policy and its implications for fertility and social policies. The one-child policy, engineered to control China's population growth by restricting fertility to one child per couple, has been controversial for many reasons, including the policy's questionable demographic and economic assumptions, the ethical concerns regarding direct state intrusion into family matters, and its negative social and demographic impacts. Cai's work has contributed to an emerging consensus on China's fertility change and the impact of the one-child policy. Specifically, his work shows that: China's fertility has dropped to a level well below the replacement; the demographic impact of the one-child policy was modest, much less than the government's claim of 400 million averted births; socioeconomic development played a critical role in driving China's fertility decline; and the socioeconomic impacts of low fertility and population aging are substantial. The consensus on these issues, to which Cai contributed, provided the empirical and scientific foundation that persuaded the Chinese government to end the three-decade-long policy.

Cai continues to monitor China's fertility in the post-one-child era, but with a new focus on international comparisons on sustained low fertility and population aging, both from a micro perspective about individual responses and family dynamics and from a macro perspective about social welfare regimes and public transfers.

Li Shuzhuo is currently University Distinguished Professor of Population and Development Policy Studies, Honorary Director of the Institute for Population and Development Studies, School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, and consulting professor at the Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, Stanford University. He is a member of the Social Sciences Committee of the Ministry of Education of China. His research is focused on population and social development as well as public policies in contemporary China, including population policies and development, gender imbalance and sustainable social development, aging and health, migration and integration.

Asia Health Policy Program (AHPP) 2021-22 Colloquium series "Aligning Incentives for Better Health and More Resilient Health Systems in Asia”

Friday, October 29, 2021, 8:30am - 9:30am (Beijing time)

This paper investigates the impact of China’s reform of the system for medical payments from traditional fee-for-service to prospective payment in the form of diagnosis-related group. The paper explores comprehensive aspects of the reform, taking advantage of a large-scale administrative data set from a pilot city in China. It finds that medical expenditure per admission dropped by 7.3 percent, with greater impact on patients who spent a larger amount. To better understand the changes, further decompositions find that the expenditure reduction is fully explained by reduction in the quantity of services instead of using cheaper ones, and by reduction in the use of drugs but not reduction in other types of services, including examination, treatment, and nursing care. In addition, no evidence is found on quality deterioration or behavioral responses, including upcoding and cream skimming. Hospitals maintained their revenue through attracting more patients to contend with cost containment induced by the payment reform.

Julie Shi is Associate Professor of Health Economics in the School of Economics and the School of Global Health Development at Peking University. Dr. Shi’s research focuses on the design and impact of health care payment systems, the economics of health insurance coverage, drug regulations, and the trend of medical expenditures. Shi’s work has contributed to the theory and practice of China’s payment system reform. Her research on health insurance includes the impact of insurance on medical utilization. She has conducted academic and policy research on government regulations on prescription drugs. She also works on the trend of expenditures for patients with catastrophic diseases.

Dr. Shi’s undergraduate degree is from Tsinghua university and her PhD is from Boston University, both in economics. Before joining Peking University, she was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. Her work has published on leading academic journals including Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, and Health Economics. She received awards for paper of the year in 2014 from the National Institute of Health Care Management (NIHCM) in the United States. She has conducted multiple projects for central and local governments in China for policy recommendation.

 

Fall 2021 Webinar Series Kickoff with Mr. Ban Ki-moon and Prof. Nicole Ardoin

September 28, 5-6 p.m. California time/ September 29, 9-10 a.m. Korea time

This event is held virtually via Zoom. Registration required.

 

The Asia-Pacific region is the world’s most vulnerable region to climate change risks. With its densely populated low-lying territories and high dependence on natural resources and agriculture sectors, Asia is increasingly susceptible to the impacts of rising sea levels and weather extremes. The impacts of climate change encompass multiple socioeconomic systems across the region, from livability and workability to food systems, physical assets, infrastructure services, and natural capital.

The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center’s Fall 2021 webinar series, “Perfect Storm: Climate Change in Asia,” explores climate change impacts and risks in the region, adaptation and mitigation strategies, and policy responses.

Join us for the series kickoff event, featuring a keynote address by former UN Secretary-General and former South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, who is known for putting sustainable development and climate change at the top of the UN agenda, and a discussion with Stanford social ecologist Nicole Ardoin, a leading expert in environment, sustainability, and climate change education. Mr. Ban’s keynote will focus on COVID-19 and climate change.

Panelists 

Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Chairman of Ban Ki-moon Foundation for a Better Future, 8th Secretary-General of the UN

Ban Ki-moon is a South Korean diplomat who was the 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations and a career diplomat in South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the UN.

Mr. Ban’s current leadership roles include the Chairman of South Korea’s Presidential National Council on Climate and Air Quality; Chairman of Boao Forum for Asia; Co-Chair of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens, Vienna; Chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s Ethics Committee; Distinguished Chair Professor and Honorary Chairman at the Institute of Global Engagement and Empowerment at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea; and President of the Assembly and Chair of the Council of Global Green Growth Institute.

Mr. Ban served two consecutive terms as the Secretary General of the UN (2007-2016). Throughout his tenure at the UN, he strove to be a bridge builder, to give voice to the world’s poorest and the most vulnerable people, and to make the organization more transparent and effective. He successfully pressed for action to combat climate change — an effort that culminated in the adoption and rapid entry into the landmark Paris Agreement in 2016. Mr. Ban worked closely with member states of the UN to shape the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to establish UN Women, which has been advancing the organization’s work for gender equality and women’s empowerment. He also launched major efforts to strengthen UN peace operations, to protect human rights, to improve humanitarian response, and to prevent violent extremism and to revitalize the disarmament agenda.

At the time of his appointment at the UN, Mr. Ban was the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea. His 37 years with the Ministry included postings in New Delhi, Washington D.C., and Vienna, and responsibilities for a variety of portfolios, including Foreign Policy Adviser to the President, Chief National Security Adviser to the President, Vice Minister, Deputy Minister for Policy Planning and Director-General for American Affairs. Mr. Ban has also been actively involved in issues relating to inter-Korean relations by serving as Chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization.

Mr. Ban earned a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1985 and a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Seoul National University in 1970.
 

Nicole Ardoin, Emmett Family Faculty Scholar, is the Sykes Family Director of the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) in the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. She is a senior fellow with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education.

Founder of the Stanford Social Ecology Lab, Professor Ardoin is an interdisciplinary social scientist who researches individual and collective environmental behavior as influenced by environmental learning and motivated by place-based connections. Professor Ardoin and members of her lab pursue their scholarship with a theoretical grounding and orientation focused on applications for practice. They often work in collaboration with community partners, including public, private, and social sector organizations at a range of scales, to co-design and implement studies that build on a theoretical frame while concurrently addressing questions of interest to the partners. This work occurs primarily in informal settings, such as parks and protected areas, nature-based tourism locales, community gathering spaces, and other everyday-life settings.

Interested in actionable knowledge and notions of co-production, Professor Ardoin and her group collaborate with sustainability, environmental conservation, and philanthropic organizations to study the design, implementation, and effectiveness of a range of social-ecological practices. Through reflective learning, curiosity, and humility, the Social Ecology Lab strives to bring theoretically based insights to sustainability opportunities and challenges.

Professor Ardoin is an associate editor of the journal Environmental Education Research, a trustee of the George B. Storer Foundation, chair of NatureBridge's Education Advisory Council, an advisor to the Student Conservation Association and Teton Science Schools, among other areas of service to the field.

 

Moderator

Gi-Wook Shin, Director of APARC and the Korea Program

Gi-Wook Shin is the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea; the founding director of the Korea Program; a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a professor of sociology, all at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, and international relations.

Co-sponsored with the Bush China Foundation

This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's spring webinar series "The United States in the Biden Era: Views from Asia."

The coronavirus pandemic has reinforced the importance of investing in population health domestically and globally, and of public-private collaboration in innovation for health goals--from technology for healthy aging to poverty alleviation and addressing other social determinants of health disparities. China, as the first health system to experience the devastation of COVID-19 and to rebound from pandemic control, offers lessons relevant beyond its borders. What can we draw from China's progress on healthcare development and its aims for innovation and public-private collaboration? In this webinar, Chinese practitioners and experts from academia and government will share their views on post-pandemic health policy and draw lessons for cooperation in global health. Scholars who have worked in and studied both the PRC and US health systems will discuss the challenges facing both—from strengthening risk protection and aligning incentives for quality improvement, to promoting goals articulated in the US’ 5th iteration of population health ‘ten-year plans’ (“Healthy People 2030”) and the PRC’s more recent “Healthy China 2030” and broader 14th Five Year Plan. What will it take to implement these ambitious goals? What is the linkage between health and China's foreign policy objectives and its place in the world? PRC experts share their views in this webinar co-hosted by Stanford’s Asia Health Policy Program and the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations.

Panelists:

Ying Cao is the China country director at Vital Strategies, where she leads the team to strengthen local public health systems through Vital Strategies’ Resolve to Save Lives’ global cardiovascular health initiative, tobacco control program, road safety program and evidence-based communication and policy advocacy. Dr. Cao brings over 15 years of experience in designing, leading, implementing and monitoring projects in the field of health and nutrition. She has extensive experience managing complex programs in China, with a specific focus on government and community-based programs to address unbalanced resource allocations to underprivileged areas.  Prior to joining Vital Strategies, Dr. Cao served as the director of Program Operations in Save the Children in China. Prior to Save the Children, she spent six years working in health and development within the non-profit sector and five years as a senior physician specializing in diagnostic ultrasound at Shanghai Ruijin Hospital.  Dr. Cao holds a master’s degree in public health nutrition from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and a bachelor’s degree in medicine from Shanghai Second Medical University.

Gordon Liu is a leading expert on health and development economics, health policy reform, and pharmaceutical economics in China. He is a key figure in Chinese health care reform efforts and sits on the China State Council Health Reform Advisory Commission. Dr. Liu currently serves as an associate editor for Health Economics and China Economic Quarterly (CEQ) journals and was a coeditor of Value in Health, the official journal of ISPOR, and the editor-in-chief of the China Journal of Pharmaceutical Economics. He is president of the Chinese Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research and served as president of the Chinese Economists Society (CES). Prior to joining Peking University, Dr. Liu was a tenured associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an assistant professor at the University of Southern California.

 Dr. Xiaofeng Liang received his medical degree at Shanxi Medical University in 1984 and a Master's degree in Public Health from the College of Public Health of Peking University of Medicine in 1995. From 1996 to 1998, he worked as a visiting scholar at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Miami, Florida, USA.  After his return to China, he held the positions of Vice-Director of Epidemic Prevention Station of Gansu Province (1999-2000), Vice-Director of Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, CAPM (2000-2001), and the Director of Immunization Program (NIP) of China CDC (2001-2011), and deputy director of China CDC.  He is the winner of the 2013 Wu Jieping-Paul Janson Medicine and Pharmacy award and has been recognized as an outstanding contribution expert of the Ministry of Health China 2011-2012. He received the special allowance subsided by the State Council of China in 2010.  Since 2008, he has been a member of the Global Strategy Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization of the WHO. He served as the Vice Secretary-general of the Chinese Foundation of Hepatitis Prevention (2005). He was a member of the Chinese Committee Advisory of Immunization Practice, the Chinese Association of Community Health and the Branch of Biological Products, and the Chinese Association of Prevention Medicine. He was a member of the National Polio Eradication Certification Committee and a member of the National Measles Elimination Verification Committee.  His research in public health led to advances in immunization and vaccine-preventable disease control in China. As the principal investigator on the Key Programs for Science and Technology Development of China since 2004, his main scientific research has focused on the epidemiology regularity and prevention and control countermeasures of Hepatitis B. His current research is focused on non-communicable disease control and nutrition and tobacco control. He is the author of more than 30 articles in national and international journals, such as The Lancet and, The New England Journal of Medicine.