Public health practice-based immersion: Practical lessons learned from Tianjin, China

As part of a structured training exchange and research collaboration between the Office of Public Health Practice at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the Director at the Tianjin Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a group of 12 graduate students, 1 staff member, and 2 faculty were invited to Tianjin, China to experience a one-week intensive immersion into the maternal and child health program and the infectious disease program at the Tianjin CDC. The practice-based experience included shadowing health professionals at various health clinics, hospitals, postpartum home health care visits, measles follow-up home visits, and attending educational lectures. In this presentation, we will compare guidelines and practices in Tianjin China and the United States relevant to prenatal and postpartum care, vaccination programs, outbreak investigations, and surveillance systems. We will highlight strengths of China's health care system including consistency of health education messages and nationwide Internet based notifiable disease reporting system and we will discuss practical applications and lessons learned. In addition we will describe the common practice of combining traditional Chinese and Western medicine for the care of mothers and infants using an example of one hospital maternity ward with a 98% breastfeeding rate. At the completion of this presentation, participants will be able to identify numerous advantages to immersing public health students in practice-based experiences.