Objective  To identify, analyze and evaluate health security risk and to provide references for management and control of health security risk and the formulation of national health security strategy in China.

  Methods  Literature analysis and panel discussion were used to construct a comprehensive health security risk assessment model. Expert consultation and mean standard deviation were used to determine comprehensive grade of health security risks.

  Results  An event set including 29 risk events of 6 categories was constructed for health security risk identification. Of the 29 risk events, 6, 5, 15, and 3 were classified as the events with extremely high, high, general, and low risk and assigned into the risk level groups of I, II, III, and IV, respectively, based on the results of the comprehensive evaluation. The discriminated 6 risk level I events include emergent (new) acute infectious disease, antibiotic abuse and drug resistance, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, malignant tumor, chronic infectious disease, and nutritional metabolic disease.

  Conclusion  Events threatening health security in China are those with complex characteristics, such as infectious diseases, chronic diseases, and high-risk behaviors and developing national health security strategies is urgent.