Our own Professor Sharon Lawn was invited to spend 3 weeks at the Centre of Disease Control in Changchun China (the home of Pu Yi – the Last Emperor)

The CDC in Changchun is responsible for tracking and coordinating the monitoring of Air, Water, Food, Infectious Disease and Chronic Disease in that part of China. Sharon’s invitation arose from the link between Flinders University and the Greater Green Triangle / Deakin University in Warnambool as a result of its sister city arrangement with Changchun.  They required someone with a chronic disease focus and expertise to undertake a research visit to their wonderful CDC team with the goal of building collaboration.

Professor Sharon Lawn provided several presentations and ran workshops on Chronic Condition Management and how this is managed in Australia.  She also carried out site visits to great primary care services and Changchun’s large mental health hospital, and visited research staff at Yinlin University.

Mr Zhang (Head of Changchun CDC) and all the people there were gracious and wonderful hosts. We hope to continue building our relationship and our shared focus on chronic condition management. They are particularly keen to develop their model of care in their primary healthcare services to build more CCSM focus.