On November 8th, a delegation led by Bergman Howard, Director of the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University, Canada, visited the Department of Medical Outpatient of Tongji University.

McGill University is a renowned research university, and the McGill School of Medicine enjoys a high reputation in Canada, making significant achievements in the field of medicine, especially in cancer research, immunology, genetics, respiratory diseases, neurology, etc. It is worth noticing that in the training of general practitioners, the School has accumulated more than 40 years of experience. Among all of its departments, the Department of Family Medicine is the strongest.

Both parties engaged in in-depth discussions on strengthening the training of general practitioners, introducing their respective methods for the prevention and control of chronic diseases, and emphasizing a preventive approach. They discussed the significance of integrating the concept of promoting health into the entire process of implementing policies for the general public, and advocated for collaborative actions across various sectors of society to build a friendly and favorable environment for health prevention and treatment.

During the discussion, they shared the common international health goal to promote a healthy lifestyle and decided to contribute more to sustainable social development. They have carried out full exchanges and discussions on related topics, including shifting from end-stage treatment to early prevention of diseases, from expert- or program-driven to government-led, from a single clinical intervention for individuals to the integrated prevention and control of preventive and controllable risk factors for groups, and from services that focus on a single, discontinuous and decentralized disease to services that focus on the whole life cycle.