Objective To provide evidence for the establishment and improvement of public health system in China by comparing national public health emergency system of some representative countries.Methods The principle and method of evidence-based science were applied to search and evaluate data from the official websites of China, United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore. The performance of each country’s public health emergency response system in SARS prevention and control, as well as their organization structure and mechanism were compared. The existing problems and corresponding countermeasures were then put forward. Results Public health system showed the best performance was in US, UK and Australia. The responding mechanism of Singapore was highly admired by WHO. The organization structure of China was similar to that of developed countries, but its performance was far lagged behind because of insufficient financial support, poor management and inefficient operational mechanism. Conclusions The public health emergency response system in China needs to be reformed by giving priority to mechanism reinforcement. Different models should be taken into account regarding different regional situations in China.
Objective To assess the methodology and report quality of Chinese systematic reviews/ meta-analyses on prevention and control of six major diseases in public health. Methods Chinese literatures of systematic reviews/ meta-analyses on prevention and control of six major diseases, including cancer, cerebrovascular disease, cardiovascular disease, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, and AIDS were searched in CQVIP, WANFANG Database, CNKI, and the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database from the establishment date to June, 2010. Two researchers independently screened and evaluated the data, disagreements were resolved by discussion. Methodology quality and report quality of included reviews were evaluated by OQAQ scale and PRISMA scale. Result Of the 139 literatures included in the analysis, 32 were systematic reviews while 107 were meta-analyses. The highest and lowest scores of methodology quality were 6.5 and 1.5 respectively. The average score was 4.66±0.92 and no literature could meet all nine items. The main problems were insufficient in literatures resource, bias in data selection, lack of rigorous quality assessment for included original studies and so on. The average score of report quality were 15.28±2.91 and the main problems were incomplete report in abstract, data collection and analysis methods, bias control, conclusion and so on. Conclusion Both of the methodology quality and report quality of included literatures have problems in different levels, which require to be further improved.
The traditional Chinese medicine has played an important role in the prevention and control of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Based on the role of traditional Chinese medicine in dealing with the previous epidemics and COVID-19, this paper analyzes the problems and challenges of current situation, and focuses on improving traditional Chinese medicine scientific identification, strengthening the construction of traditional Chinese medicine system, and increasing the intensity of Chinese and Western medicine and so on. In order to improve the cooperation mechanism of Chinese and Western medicine for epidemic prevention and control, and give full play to the role of traditional Chinese medicine in the construction of national public health emergency system, this paper also gives ten corresponding suggestions.
Social prescription is a medical model in which social resources are integrated to provide personalized support to targeted population. It can improve health outcomes and reduce the pressure on health system by addressing social determinants of health. It is a new trend of global health. This paper introduces social prescribing’s definition, history, components, global development, effectiveness, existing problems, and practice in China, analyzes the common and individual issues faced by social prescription in development, and puts forward the opportunities for integrating traditional Chinese medicine into social prescribing in China, aiming better to realize the "Healthy China 2030" strategy.
Objective To evaluate the current status of human resources in healthcare-associated infection prevention and control (infection control) in Jiangxi Province, and explore the impact of emergency public health events on the human resources of infection control professionals in various levels and types of medical institutions. Methods From October 1st to 31st, 2023, questionnaire and on-site interviews were conducted to investigate the human resources situation of infection control professionals in various levels and types of medical institutions in Jiangxi Province. Three stages were selected for the investigation: before the outbreak of COVID-19 (before the event, December 2019), during the event (June 2022), and after the transition of COVID-19 (after the event, June 2023), focusing on the characteristics of human resources between before the event and after the event by the comparative analysis. Results Finally, 289 medical institutions were included. There was a statistically significant difference in the number of infection control professionals in medical institutions among 2019, 2022, and 2023 (χ2=189.677, P<0.001). The number of infection control professionals in 2019 was lower than that in 2022 (P<0.001) and 2023 (P<0.001), but there was no statistically significant difference between 2022 and 2023 (P=0.242). The number of infection control professionals per thousand beds in 2019, 2022, and 2023 was 4.40, 6.16, and 5.76, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference between 2019 and 2023 in terms of professional titles, gender, educational level, or professional background (P>0.05). Conclusion Emergency public health events have promoted the increase in the number of infection control professionals, but there is no statistical significance in the professional titles, educational level, or professional background of infection control professionals.
Objective To describe the range of Public-private partnerships (PPP) in the provision of healthcare services, and how the authors have assessed these partnerships. Methods We searched 19 international electronic databases and 3 grey literature databases up to September 2008. Nine websites of relevant organizations and Google were searched for any missing information. Search terms were determined by both health policy experts and search specialists after repeated discussion and pilot searching. Our inclusion criteria were research papers that reported describing or evaluating any public-private partnerships in provision of healthcare services. Two reviewers independently screened, appraised and extracted the data, and disagreements were resolved by discussion or by consulting a third researcher. The studies that scored A or B in terms of quality assessment were analyzed. Results Of the 38 studies included in the analysis, 22 studies aimed to describe strategies, while 16 ones were to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies. The targeted populations were tuberculosis patients, AIDS patients, psychiatric patients, community residents and children. Six partnership mechanisms were categorized: ① formal/ informal contract; ② working group committee; ③ supervision, training and regulation; ④ support and subsidizing; ⑤ integration of health care organizations; and ⑥ co-location. Most of the studies evaluating effectiveness were observational studies. Only three studies were comparative studies, pre- and post- intervention. The results of the most evaluation studies showed that PPP had positive impact on service provision, while it also had some problems and challenges. Conclusion Current studies show that PPP could improve health service provisions to some extent. There are limitations in the range of health services and the depth of the studies, especially evaluation studies that lack rigorous design. However, people should be cautious when they try to learn from the experience from internationally successful PPPs and consider the Chinese context, as the effect of PPP is closely associated with the relevant implementation context.
The rapid development of medical informatization and continuous innovation of artificial intelligence have made it possible to analyze data and predict prognosis through making full use of data analysis or data mining methods in medical field, which can provide not only more accurate basis of diagnosis and treatment for patients but also important decision-making reference for the government and hospitals to allocate medical resources reasonably. As a classical model for processing time series data in machine learning, long short-term memory network can break through some limitations of statistics to process large and complex medical data. The current applications of long short-term memory networks in medical and biomedical fields can be mainly summarized as seven themes, including natural language processing, biomedical information, signals, motion, clinical medical records, hospital management, and public health and policy.
ObjectiveTo investigate the essential healthcare system performance in Xinjin county of Chengdu city from 2009 to 2010, so as to provide baseline data for further study. MethodsThe general information of the essential healthcare, such as the numbers of out and in-patients, service and profits were collected and then analyzed using the software of Microsoft Excel 2003 and SPSS 13.0. Resultsa) The results showed that the numbers of out and in-patients were in the rank of the county, township and community hospital. The numbers of out and emergency patients has been decreased 31.0% and 25.3% in the community hospital from 2009 to 2010, while patients in the county and township hospital has been increased. The numbers of in-patients has been increased by year; b) hospital bed occupancy has been increased by year, and the hospital bed occupancy of county hospitals was 8% lower than national level in 2009, 33.5% higher in 2010, the hospital bed occupancy of township hospitals from 2009 to 2010 was higher than national level, the ones of community hospital was lower than national level; c) there is an annual decreasing tendency for average days for hospitalization in county and community hospital, which were higher than national level; d) it was lower than national average rate; e) the inpatient fee per time was lower than national average rate; f) in the components of the in-patients expense, drug expense, operation expense and diagnose expense were constituted more than 86% in all eight costs; and g) the receipts and expenditure of Xinjin hospital throughout the year increased by years, the income and expenses showed 39.3% and 37.7%. ConclusionThe hospital bed occupancy, average hospitalization days and the inpatient fee per time in Xinjin county of Chengdu city during 2009-2010, were higher than national level. The overall health performance of hospitals in Xinjin county was satisfied. However, there was significant difference between the best and the worst. In order to distribute health resources, both benefit and efficient should be emphasized.