On July 11th, the 2022 Tongji Summer School (TJSS2022) was officially kicked off. Nearly a thousand of outstanding students from 91 universities in 17 countries and regions gathered online on the opening ceremony. Prof. Jianguo Chen, Vice President of HUST and Prof. An Pan, Dean of the School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College of HUST, delivered opening remarks. Heads of schools and departments of HUST attended the ceremony. Dr. Jie Chen, Director of the Office of International Affairs of HUST, moderated the ceremony.
Prof. Jianguo Chen first welcomed students and young scholars to join the TJSS2022 and conveyed his gratitude to the 13 course lectures. He said that in responding to the immense uncertainty and challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, Tongji Medical College launched the first-ever global summer program in 2021, which brought emerging medical leaders worldwide together to learn, discuss, and explore in the field of public health. This year, HUST continued to offer a unique interdisciplinary platform which combining world-class universities' teaching, research resources and tailor-made curriculum to inspire global students to greater understand the medical challenges faced by the post-pandemic world, to gain deeper perspectives and awareness through a global mindset.
Prof. Chen pointed out that as a comprehensive research university, HUST has been living up to its social expectation by joining the inter-disciplinary clusters and offers the best training courses to cultivate high-level talents, and to counterpart the changes and challenges from this new era. By hosting this event and sharing the intellectual resource, HUST is endeavoring to work hand-in-hand with our partners, to negotiate the current obstacles, and to advance the building of a human community with shared future. He looked forward to seeing the fruitful outcomes of participants and wished the program a great success in this summer.
Prof. An Pan, Dean of the School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College of HUST noted in his speech that this was a critical time for the field of global public health and medicine. COVID-19 pandemic, chronic diseases, global warming, environment pollution are all important health problems we are facing. Global collaboration is more important than ever. Therefore, we have continued to make this year’s summer school freely available to students from our key partner institutes. We encourage all the participants to utilize this unique education platform to learn from the faculty members, and to learn from each other of different culture background. We hope that students can confront complex public health problems with professionality, competence, rationality, and empathy. This year, through the network of the Global Coalition of Deans of the School of Public Health, TJSS2022 is also going to be organizing a master-class series where Deans of famous schools of public health will provide insights on global health issues.
To follow, Prof. Chris Tselepis, Head of School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Prof. Xi CHEN, an Associate Professor of global health policy and economics at Yale University, Prof. Zhuo (Adam) CHEN, an Associate Professor and DrPH Program Coordinator of College of Public Health, University of Georgia (UGA), Prof. Chun–Tao CHE, the Harry H.S. Fong Professor of Pharmacognosy in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Prof. Dianxu Ren, Director for Statistical and Data Support Services at Center for Research & Education (CRE) at School of Nursing, University of Pittsburgh gave opening remarks online. Prof. Jinbo Fang, an Associate Professor of School of Pharmacy, Tongji Medical College of HUST made a speech offline.
The ceremony also presented five opening-speech recordings from Prof. Oscar H. Franco, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Director of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM) at the University of Bern, Prof. Changzheng Yuan, a Research Professor at Zhejiang University School of Public Health, Prof. Yiqiang Zhan, an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health, Sun Yat-Sen University, Prof. Sara Hägg, a Researcher at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet (KI) , and Prof. Gil Mor, Director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development at Wayne State University.
All lecturers extended their great honor to be invited to participate in the TJSS2022 and congratulated the grand opening. They looked forward to interacting with young students from all over the world in the next four weeks.
Miss Wenya Zhang, the student representative from the School of Nursing, Tongji Medical College of HUST, expressed her sincere gratitude to all the teachers for their hard work. She expected to exchanging ideas on reproductive health, evidence-based practice, health economics and policy with experts and peers major in medicine worldwide over the next four weeks. She believed TJSS2022 will give her a more holistic view of the medical system, which can be inspiring enough to motivate her to continue career in the field of healthcare research.
After the ceremony, Professor Margaret Chan, Founding Dean of Tsinghua Vanke School of Public Health, Emeritus Director General of World Health Organization, gave an insightful lecture entitled “Health and Sustainable Development”, marking the start of the Master-class series to be held during the summer school.
Dr. Chan introduced the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, along with a set of new Global Goals set by the United Nations in 2015. Through concept analysis and case study, she interpreted the important role of advancing global health in promoting sustainable development, as well as the inseparable and interlocking relationship among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Dr. Chan advocated strengthening international exchanges and multilateral cooperation to ultimately achieve the goal of ‘Universal Health Coverage’.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought immense uncertainty and challenges to our world today. In responding to and learning from these challenges, Tongji Medical College (TJMC) of HUST launched the first-ever Tongji Summer Program in 2021, offering emerging medical leaders worldwide a unique interdisciplinary platform to be immersed and inspired. Organized collaboratively by 6 schools from TJMC, TJSS2022 will be held from July 11 to August 5. It covers diverse topics in medical disciplines including epidemiology, clinical medicine, nutrition, reproductive health, health management and traditional Chinese medicine, etc. Through a tailor-made curriculum featuring both theoretical lectures and innovative and interactive activities, participants will explore innovative methods to build their sustainable development. Combining world-class universities' teaching and research resources, Tongji Summer School aims to inspire global students to greater understand the medical challenges faced by the post-pandemic world, to gain deeper perspectives and awareness through a global mindset, and to enhance cross-cultural communication and interdisciplinary skills.
(Written by Jialin Fang, edited by Haikun Wang)
