Public tasks abroad among professionals of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention:2005-2014

Objective To analyze characteristics of public tasks abroad among public health experts from Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention(China CDC)from 2005 through 2014 and to explore the developmental trend in international cooperation of public health.Methods Data on staff composition, task type, funding source, and country and area of destination for public tasks abroad assigned by China CDC were collected and processed with Access 2007.SPSS 16.0 was adopted in data analyses, Results Totally 6 258 person-times of public tasks abroad were carried out by the professionals from China CDC and the annual number of the tasks increased first and then decreased after a stable period during the 10 years.Of the professionals involved in the tasks, 50.32%(3 149)were from departments of infectious disease, 22.63%(1 414)from departments of technical management, 16.96%(1 061)from departments of noncommunicable disease, and 9.97%(624)from public health management units.The majority of the professionals engaged in the tasks were professors and associate professors(69.00%, 4 318), followed by research associate(16.75%, 1 048), research assistant(8.36%, 523)and program contractors(5.90%, 369).Attending international conference or symposium, academic visiting/training/working, and project cooperation were main objectives of the tasks, accounting for 57.72%(4 084), 33.50%(1 657), and 8.17%(515)of all tasks, respectively.There were significant differences in types of the tasks among different years(χ²=272.77, P<0.01).Compared with the declining proportion(29.81%, 138/463)of foreign funding sources supporting the public tasks abroad, the domestic funding sources increased yearly to 58.32%(279/463) by the year of 2014.Conclusion The public tasks abroad assigned by China CDC were mainly carried out by the experts with senior professional title and engaged in communicable disease control and prevention;the major part of the tasks was attending meeting and domestic funding was the main financial support source for the tasks.