Respected leaders and guests, the topic of my speech today is: Recognize and understand public health to implement the Healthy China strategy. I will report to you from two aspects:

Firstly, I want to share with you the origin and development of public health. What is public health? Everyone knows it, but may not know it all. Sanitation, protection and disinfection is public health; vaccination is public health; air quality monitoring is also public health. When we were studying public health at school, the teacher told us that public health "involves the sky and the earth, and the air in between", which means that the connotation and denotation of public health are fairly comprehensive. What is the definition of public health in China? Ensuring public health is to organize all communities to work together to improve environment and sanitation conditions, prevent and control the spread of infectiousdiseases and other diseases, develop hygiene habits and healthy lifestyles, provide medical services, and achieve the purpose of preventing diseases and promoting people's health.

The most important mission of public health is to prevent the strike of the disease. Now, COVID-19 has made everyone realize the important role of collectiveness. This reveals that public health depends on the effective control of risk factors from all walks of life. Now I’ll turn to the origin of public health. Originally there was no such thing as “public health”; diseases and other related human sufferings gave birth to it. It aims to improve the health of all human, and it develops in order to conquer social health challenges. Public health originates from human’s awareness and demand for health. In order to survive and develop, human beings must make organized efforts to solve the health problems caused by dwelling in large groups. Littering and disease transmission are examples of the problems arisen in such process, and we need to work together to deal with such problems.

The history of the development of public health is very long, so I won't talk about it at length. The last two hundred years are defined as the modern public health period, that is, the modern period of public health began since 1830, when the British Public Health Law was promulgated. Here, I will talk about several milestones in the history of public health:

The first milestone is the concept that environmental health and diseases are connected, which was proposed by Hippocrates; the second milestone is the establishment of infectious disease quarantine and border health checking systems, which have appeared in the 13th century. At that time, foreign ships had to stay on the water for 40 days before entering a country, and this is an instance of the earliest practice. The third milestone is the adoption of active immunization, that is, the use of vaccines. The vaccine for smallpox is the pioneer of active immunization. The fourth is the approval of the Public Health Law in 1848 in the UK. It is the first modern public health law, marking the arrival of modern public health period. The fifth is the emergence of modern epidemiology. In 1854, when cholera raged the U.K., and John Snow adopted the spot mapping method. By showing the location of patients on the map, which are close to the source of infection, he identified the cause of the epidemic. This is the idea behind the emergence of modern epidemiology.

Current Situation-Public health used to come in a different name. Now we define the subject as the study for the health of the public. Public health is a proper name, and it also suggests greater responsibilities.

A milestone for the development of public health would be the building of national health service system, like the health system introduced in the UK 100 years ago. The concept of global health puts forward a model of determinants of health. The determinants of health may include not only individuals; sometimes there are groups or other economic and social factors. These determine the origin of public health.

Now, I will briefly introduce the "Healthy China" strategy in the new era. Our public health faces many challenges: The first challenge being the aging of the population. We know that by 2030, China’s aging population will reach its peak. The second challenge is that the burden of chronic diseases and infectious diseases is increasing year by year; the third challenge is that residents’ lack of awareness for healthy life styles. Smoking, heavy drinking and lack of physical exercise, these unhealthy behaviors are common in our people. But there is more to public health.

What is the opportunity for public health in China? On August 19, 2016, the National Health Conference was held. President Xi Jinping emphasized that Prosperity for all is impossible without health for all. This is a major opportunity for public health. There are two main aspects of the “Healthy China” Strategy. One is that health promotes the overall development of people; the other concerns the basic conditions for economic and social development. These two aspects define the importance of our health. Our “Healthy China” strategy aims that by 2030, China’s major health indicators will match those of the high income countries; people's health will continue to improve, the capabilities to render health service will be greatly improved, the scale of the industry will be significantly expanded, and the healthy institutional system will be more well-established. We will evaluate our strategic goals from these five aspects. “Healthy Lishui” has set an example in these aspects, and we hope the Lishui demonstration area will do better.

There are the five major tasks of “healthy China”. The first is healthy living; the second is health services; the third is health protection; the fourth is a healthy environment; and the fifth is the health industry. We have seen these aspects today. Last year, China promulgated an action plan of 15 items  for “Healthy China”, which will be a guidance for actions from 15 aspects: first, health knowledge popularization; second, proper diets; third, comprehensive fitness exercise; fourth, smoking control; fifth, mental health promotion; sixth, healthy environment promotion; seventh, maternal and child health promotion; eighth, health promotion in primary and secondary schools; ninth, occupational health protection; tenth, health promotion for the elderly. And also, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease prevention and control; cancer prevention and treatment; chronic disease prevention and treatment, diabetes prevention and treatment, and infectious diseases and their local prevention and control. I hope that the “Healthy China” strategy will be carried out according to these 15 aspects, and we also expect that we can achieve these goals by 2030.

Let’s work together to build a healthy China. Thank you!