Global Preparedness for Public Health

There are many reasons to be interested in public health in China. China is the single most populous nation on earth and was the point of origin for SARS and probably for most pandemic influenza viruses, past and future. In this issue of the Journal, we get a valuable window into the organization of public health emergency preparedness in China in the form of the paper, “Preparing and responding to public health emergencies in China: Results of a focus group study”. This paper summarizes the results of focus groups conducted with 47 local- and provincial-level public health officials, and includes some of the most complete information on Chinese public health emergency preparedness at the working level. That makes it an invaluable contribution to the growing literature on public health emergency preparedness.