Tsinghua Vanke School of Public Health and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health held a virtual MoU signing ceremony on December 2. Dean Margaret Chan of Tsinghua Vanke School of Public Health and Dean Michelle A. Williams of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, entered the agreement which outlines collaboration to advance global health security. Professor Yang Bin, the Vice President and Provost of Tsinghua University, and Professor Alan Garber, the Provost of Harvard University, witnessed the signing and delivered remarks. The signing ceremony was hosted by James Chau, the Special Advisor to Dean Margaret Chan.

Alan Garber mentioned in his address that the collaboration between the two schools is timely. He further explained, on the one hand, global health challenges require global solutions. Nations need to work together to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and other challenges for human health; on the other hand, this collaboration will further the goal of both Universities to train the leaders of the future, guide the global health agenda now and for generations to come, and advance the shared mission of improving public health around the world.

Yang Bin emphasized that health is the foundation of social civilization and progress, and a priority goal of public policies of all countries. Promoting global health is important to the implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Yang Bin said, Tsinghua University has always been committed to develop innovative solutions to help solve pressing problems in China and the world, through education and research. Either the foundation of Vanke School of Public Health, or the initiation of World Health Forum, is exactly the action that Tsinghua took to coalesce global wisdom, to create opportunities for dialogues and to promote global cooperation.

Yang Bin encouraged faculty and students from both Schools and Universities to fully use this collaborative platform to share new knowledge, to tackle common public health challenges, and to jointly contribute to the development of human health.

A dynamic dialogue session, Fireside Conversation, was held before the signing ceremony. Dean Margaret Chan and Dean Michelle Williams shared their reflections on what we can learn from our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, HIV AIDS, and other historic health crisis, on how talent and technologies can build solutions for health, for social justice, for gender equity and toward the Sustainable Development Goals. They also exchanged insights on where Harvard and Tsinghua lead and can contribute meaningfully. They stressed, to better respond to future challenges, the world needs cross-sector and inter-disciplinary cooperation, technical innovation as well as inclusion.

Tsinghua and Harvard have extensive cooperation in business administration, public administration, bio-medicine, environment, energy and other fields. The new collaboration between Tsinghua and Harvard in the field of public health, is a timely development for the two universities to shoulder even greater responsibilities and to jointly respond to global challenges. The MoU allows the two Schools to cooperate on student exchanges, short-term courses, joint research and publications, sabbatical visits. Wang Kaibo, Vice Dean of Tsinghua Vanke School of Public Health, and Wang Hui, Associate Dean of Office of International Affairs of Tsinghua University, and other colleagues from Tsinghua also joined the event.

(Drafted by Li Tian /Edited by John Paul /Photo by Si Hongfeng)