Chinese health and society: Professor Jane Duckett

Issued: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 14:03:00 BST

The University has been awarded £508,678 by the Economic and Social Research Council to investigate Chinese people’s perceptions and evaluations of their health system.

China has radically transformed its health system over the last 30 years, leading to a change in the Chinese population’s attitudes towards their health care. ‘What was a fully publicly funded health system has now been commercialised. It’s brought a lot of money into the health system but it’s also made it very expensive for people,’ explains Jane Duckett, Edward Caird Chair of Politics and principal investigator on the project.

The new health care system is also thought to have reduced people’s trust in doctors, but this is the first major academic study to focus on the issue. ‘One of the key things we will look at is whether trust and perceptions of the reformed system’s cost actually affect people’s health seeking behaviour,’ says Professor Duckett.

Glasgow researchers will be working with colleagues at Peking University to conduct a nationally representative social survey in China. State of the art techniques will be used to obtain a sample population that is representative on key demographic and geographical indicators, allowing the team to analyse and generalise about the population’s health care attitudes.

The team will also engage with a range of governmental and non-governmental agencies and potential beneficiaries. There will be workshops in China with Chinese policy makers and economic think tanks that advise the government, and the team will also work with the World Bank’s Office in China, the World Health Organisation, and the UK’s Department for International Development.