Health policies at provincial level for the Construction of Healthy China

  Objective   To discuss concerns, similarities and differences of provincial health policies for the implementation of 'Healthy China 2030' Plan and to provide considerations for future health policy development.

  Methods  We searched 21 health policy documents issued by governmental agencies of provincial level regions from October 2016 to August 2018 and performed word frequency, cluster, and reference point analysis for the documents using NVivo 11.0 qualitative software.

  Results   The cluster analysis for the 21 documents and 'Healthy China 2030' Plan resulted in the Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.73 – 0.97. The local governments concentrated their efforts mainly on the construction tasks of optimizing health services and building a healthy environment; totally 17, 14, and 10 indicators were proposed by the policy documents for assessing healthy environment, health service and support, and healthy living.

  Conclusion   All provincial health policy documents are in line with the guiding principles of 'Healthy China 2030' Plan but emphasize concerns on various aspects; efforts on innovation and responsibility assignment should be promoted in health policy making at provincial level.