Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Feb:143:106324.
doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.106324. Epub 2020 Nov 10.

Optimizing preventive medicine to bridge the gap between clinical medicine and public health for disease control in China: A lesson from COVID-19

Wu Zeng  1 , Guohong Li  2 , Vincent Turbat  3 , Guoqing Hu  4 , Haksoon Ahn  5 , Jie Shen  6
Affiliations

Optimizing preventive medicine to bridge the gap between clinical medicine and public health for disease control in China: A lesson from COVID-19

Wu Zeng et al. Prev Med. 2021 Feb.

Abstract

The pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) highlights the importance of early detection of disease outbreaks, taking swift and decisive public health actions, and strengthening public health systems. Preventive medicine, as a specialty of medicine, trains students on both clinical medicine and public health and is of a particular need in battling against this pandemic. In China, preventive medicine plays a unique role in the disease control system where preventive medicine graduates represent a large share of the workforce. However, there is a shortage of qualified staff in the Chinese disease control system. The reasons for such a shortage are multifaceted. From the human resource perspective, the undergraduate preventive medicine curricula and exclusive public health training for preventive medicine postgraduates limit their clinical capacities. A series of disease control and public health education reforms may further incapacitate preventive medicine graduates' clinical skills, unintentionally widening the gap between public health and clinical medicine and thus posing threats to effective disease detection and control. The authors call for reforming and optimizing preventive medicine to bridge the gap between clinical medicine and public health by strengthening curricula on clinical medicine, diversifying curricula on public health, enhancing preventive medicine residency programs, and rectifying regulations that restrict preventive medicine graduates from practicing curative medicine.

Keywords: Disease control; Human resources; Preventive medicine; Public health.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Author The distinction between public health and community/social/preventive medicine. J. Public Health Policy. 1985;6:435–439. (No author listed) - PubMed
    1. Bouey J. Rand Cooperation; Washington, DC: 2020. China’s health system reform and global health strategy in the context of COVID-19: Testimony presented before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on May 7, 2020.https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/Bouey_Written_Testimony... Accessed date: June 26 2020.
    1. Hou J., Wang Z., Liu X., Luo Y., Sabharwal S., Wang N., Meng Q. Public health education at China's higher education institutions: a time-series analysis from 1998 to 2012. BMC Public Health. 2018;18:679. doi: 10.1186/s12889-018-5605-4. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Jia P., Yang S. China needs a national intelligent syndromic surveillance system. Nat. Med. 2020 doi: 10.1038/s41591-020-0921-5. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Li C., Sun M., Wang Y., Luo L., Yu M., Zhang Y., Wang H., Shi P., Chen Z., et al. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention system in China: trends from 2002-2012. Am. J. Public Health. 2016;106:2093–2102. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2016.303508. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types