Report on the International Symposium on Quality of Care in China

In 1995, China’s State Family Planning Commission (SFPC), the governmental agency charged with developing and implementing China’s population policy, issued an official call for the reorientation of the family planning program from a focus on demographic targets to meeting clients’ needs. In support of this reorientation effort, the SFPC selected six rural counties and five urban districts with comparatively good socioeconomic conditions as pilot sites for a quality-of-care experiment. This report provides a summary of an international symposium on quality of care held in Beijing from November 17–19, 1999. The symposium was sponsored by SFPC with the support of the Ford Foundation as part of the international collaboration on China’s quality-of-care initiative. The purpose of the symposium was threefold: to review the experiences of China’s quality-of-care initiative in the pilot counties and districts to date; to discuss strategies for institutionalizing the quality-of-care approach in the pilot sites; and to discuss expansion and further development of the program throughout China, in keeping with the SFPC’s decision that the quality-of-care experiment should be expanded nationwide.