In response to widespread campus closure globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic and as part of the knowledge transfer endeavour of the Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC), another free video-based Chinese online course “Health and disaster preparedness in rural China” is now open for registration until 31 July 2020 at XuetangX platform. Upon registration, students are allowed to study the course at a safe location and at their own pace. The course will be very useful for students and practitioners to acquire and improve their basic knowledge and practical skills of public health, while improving the accuracy and accessibility of health knowledge dissemination at the same time. We also hope to provide more comprehensive background knowledge, professional theory and project management experience for rural project organizers.

With a total population of nearly 1.4 billion, China has the largest population in the world, of which the rural population accounts for 41.5%. In view of the imbalance of economic and public health development in urban and rural areas, narrowing the urban-rural gap and improving the living and health conditions of rural residents have always been an important issue in China's social development. In this course, we will share our team's practical experience over the years, as well as our understanding and thinking on rural issues. We hope that more students and volunteers will participate in rural health education and promotion activities more systematically, and contribute their own strength to promote rural health development.

This course is organized in three lessons. First of all, this course will have a basic discussion on the current situation of medical and healthcare in rural areas and the process of policy reform, so that students will have a macro understanding of the existing problems and development of rural health work. Secondly, it tries to help students understand the socio-psychological reasons behind different behaviours and enable the design of health promotion projects to be more scientific and effective by describing the basic knowledge of public health and the theoretical models of behavioural science. Finally, common public health problems and disaster prevention issues in contemporary rural areas of China, as well as the common working methods of rural health education, have been selected to facilitate reference and borrowing in the process of practice.

Established in 2013, XuetangX is a leading online learning platform in Chinese language led by Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, Peking University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It has the largest number of online courses and users in China and hosts courses from leading universities in China, including The Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well as MIT, Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley.

Please visit this link (https://next.xuetangx.com/course/cuhk03031002067/4058047) to find out more about the course and enroll today! 

For enquiry, please email [email protected]