🎧 Here on The ChinaHealthPulse Podcast, I chat in depth with the true experts who have dedicated years to working in and with China’s health - across policy, industry, academia and well beyond. Our candid conversations aim to provide you with real insight into how care is delivered, how decisions are made, and why it all matters, far beyond China’s borders.

This second episode of the CHP Podcast welcomes a distinguished guest: someone who has spent decades at the frontlines of public health diplomacy, from refugee camps and conflict zones, to multilateral negotiations in Beijing.

I am delighted to share this conversation with my long-time mentor, Siddharth Chatterjee, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in China. As the senior-most representative of the UN Secretary-General in China, Sid leads and coordinates the work of over 26 UN agencies to work with the Chinese government in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals, from health and innovation to development and partnerships.

Before taking up this role in 2021, he led as the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya and earlier as the UNFPA Representative there, spearheading national efforts to reduce maternal mortality and end harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation. Prior to that, he worked in many regions affected by conflict and crisis across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, including for UN peacekeeping, UNICEF, UNOPS and the International Federation of the Red Cross.

A Princeton graduate and decorated former Special Forces officer in the Indian Army, Sid is a widely published commentator, speaking and writing regularly on global development and humanitarian issues, as well as on health and wellbeing through meditation and breath-work.

Today, he joins us to talk about what it really takes to build trust, drive impact and keep multilateralism relevant in today’s changing global health landscape.

To kick off the first episode of The ChinaHealthPulse Podcast, I’m delighted to welcome a very special guest indeed: Professor Tien-Yin Wong is an internationally recognised physician-scientist and practicing ophthalmologist, being among the top 1 % highly cited researchers in the world, leading clinical and translational research, innovation, enterprise and industry collaboration.

Prof. Wong has trained and worked across East and West: he studied medicine at the National University of Singapore and received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Later, he was Chair of Ophthalmology at the University of Melbourne, Medical Director of the Singapore National Eye Center, as well as Vice Dean of Duke-NUS Medical School. He now serves as the Founding Dean and Chair Professor of Tsinghua Medicine, a new academic health system based at China’s top university, where he is leading one of the boldest experiments in health innovation: the creation of China’s first AI hospital.

In our conversation, Prof. Wong reflects on his journey across countries and systems, bringing lessons learned from the US, Australia and Singapore, and now to China’s top university. He shares fascinating insights about the similarities and differences between China’s healthcare system and digital ecosystem compared to the West, how to align across siloed Chinese ministries (the perennial challenge for anyone working in China!), and how he is patiently, yet ambitiously, working to achieve these pioneering feats.