Global REACH welcomed a multidisciplinary group from Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) and China Medical Board the week of March 11. The following week, a group of Rehabilitation faculty from Peking University Health Science Center (PKUHSC) visited Ann Arbor.
The meetings marked the first time that representatives from either school—both longtime institutional partners of UMMS—visited Ann Arbor since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first group included Wenkai Li, MD, who leads the China Medical Board Beijing Office, housed on the PUMC campus. Earlier this year, the China Medical Board funded a Women’s Leadership Fellowship program that brings early-career faculty from China to Michigan Medicine for one year for leadership training and mentoring within their discipline. Dr. Li was able to meet with scholars from the program’s inaugural cohort to hear about experience to date. More recently, the organization supported the new CMB Postdoctoral Fellowships program, creating opportunities for US researchers to spend a year working in a Chinese laboratory.
The delegation also included PUMC Hospital leaders from Obstetrics and Gynecology, Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics and Radiology. In addition to individual meetings with UMMS counterparts, the group engaged in discussions about medical education with Michigan Medicine leaders including Executive Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Chief Academic Officer, Debra Weinstein, MD; Dean Emeritus James Woolliscroft, MD; Associate Dean of Graduate Medical Education Janet Sybil Biermann, MD; and Senior Associate Dean of Medical Education Louito Edje, MD, MHPE.
The following week, leaders from the Peking University Health Science Center, led by Third Hospital Chief Physician and Professor of Department of Rehabilitation Mouwang Zhou, MD, visited Michigan Medicine to discuss potential collaborations. PKUHSC is Michigan Medicine’s longtime partner in the Joint Institute, which has helped launch more than 77 collaborative research projects between the two partner schools, although none yet that focus on aspects of physical medicine and rehabilitation.
Dr. Zhou and his colleagues were able to tour facilities both on the primary medical campus as well as offsite clinical spaces, and meet with leaders including Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Chair Nitin Jain, MBBS, MSPH; Chair Emeritus Edward Hurvitz, MD; and Associate Chair Sandra Hearn, MD.
“I am so appreciative of my UMMS colleagues for taking the time to meet with our guests and sharing their expertise,” said Global REACH Director Joseph Kolars, MD, MACP.
