On the morning of October 6, Dr. Margaret Chan, the Dean of Vanke School of Public Health of Tsinghua University and the former Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), and a three-person team visited the Department of Earth System Science (DESS) of Tsinghua University. Professor Gong Peng, Dean of DESS, and Professor Luo Yong, Secretary of the DESS’s Party Branch, met with the guests. Professor Yang Jun and Associate Professors Bai Yuqi, Cai Wenjia, Liu Zhu and Xu Lei attended the meeting and conducted academic exchanges.    

Gong Peng introduced the relevant situation of DESS to the guests.

First of all, on behalf of DESS, Gong Peng extended a warm welcome to Dr. Margaret Chan and her team. He briefly introduced the historical evolution, development goals, research directions and scientific research results of DESS to the guests, and introduced in detail the research priorities, work deployment and highlights of DESS in planetary health. Afterwards, the two parties had full exchanges and discussions on research progress in climate models, environmental change and disease transmission, climate change and public health, real-time global carbon emissions monitoring, public health and health big data, and healthy cities.                            

The two parties took a group photo after the academic exchange.

Dr. Margaret Chan stated that public health in the 21st century is a cross-disciplinary comprehensive discipline, based on biostatistics and epidemiology, involving the intersection of climate, environment, economy, and policy. The COVID-19 pandemic is a major public health emergency, and it poses new challenges to the monitoring, early warning and decision-making system of public health risks. The research progress of DESS in planetary health is exciting, especially in the interdisciplinary field. It is expected that Vanke School of Public Health and DESS can enhance cooperation in future scientific research, talent training and exchanges, and go hand in hand. Dr. Margaret Chan also made suggestions for further advancement and deepening of related research work in DESS.      

Dr. Margaret Chan, the Dean of Vanke School of Public Health of Tsinghua University and the former Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO)