Key concepts for healthy nation listed

In August, the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council hosted the National Hygiene and Health Conference in Beijing. President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping summed up the achievements and basic experiences of the hygiene and health cause since the founding of the country, and expounded on the guiding ideology, goals and tasks of promoting a healthy China. He stressed that well-off must embrace overall health, meaning that health should become a strategic priority.

It is extremely important to cultivate healthy concepts before promoting the effective implementation of healthy China strategy. In other words, shift from a material-centered to a human-centered philosophy.

The concept is based on the following:

First, human-centered development is human health-centered development. Health is the requirement to promote the comprehensive development of human beings, the basis of economic and social development conditions and an important symbol of national prosperity. It is also desired by everyone. Thus, it is important and urgent to make health a priority.

Second, during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period, the development of China's economy will maintain its rapid pace, and living standards will be substantially increased, further stimulating the diversified health service needs at different levels. Therefore, the concept is an inherent requirement of an overall well-off society.

Third, deepening structural reforms in the health sector can create new economic growth points. Hence, the concept is a practical requirement of changing the development model.

Fourth, it is a worldwide trend that health has been key to human development and a vital part of national soft power. As a consequence, China needs to follow the trend and actively participate in global health development.

The concept of thinking macroscopically, transferring the mind-set from a disease-centered approach to a health-centered approach should be cultivated. With the development of the economy and society, and changes in the spectrum of diseases, lifestyles and the environment are playing a greater role in people's health orientation. To deal with the challenges of multiple diseases, it is vital to place health at the center, and think macroscopically and strategically.

The concept of serving the population for the whole life cycle should also be cultivated. The main functions of health system are not only to prevent and treat diseases, or to maintain and restore health, but to improve the overall health situation.

Such a change in view will change the meaning of health. First, health is an issue of all the citizens. The transfer requires that the health system needs to switch its target audience from the patient to the larger population, and strengthen the health education and management; second, putting disease as the center leads people to focus more on physiological and genetic factors. However, taking health as the center requires people to pay more attention to social determinants; and third, health applies to the whole life cycle, while disease is only part of life. The supply side needs to have the ability to provide hygiene and health services, and accurate intervention for people in different life stages with their health issues.

The keys tasks should be cultivated as a working philosophy, shifting from reliance solely on the health sector to something the whole society can build and share together.

The author is dean of theChina National Health Development Research Center of the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

(China Daily European Weekly 02/17/2017 page8)