“Summary meeting for the “Community Participation to Promote the Health of Rural Elderly” project held in Beijing

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The last edit to this post was made by 68589544 on 2016-10-31 at 23:42. A summary meeting for the “Community Engagement to Improve Health among Rural Elderly” project was held in Beijing. On October 31, 2016, a summary meeting for this project, carried out by the **National Health and Family Planning Commission** and the **Kadoorie Foundation**, was held in Beijing. **About 70 people attended the meeting, including senior officials and project leaders from the Office for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs and the Department of Primary Health Care of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, the Maternal and Child Health Center of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as project teams from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Shanxi Province, Qinghai Province and other locations. The meeting summarized the implementation status, achievements, and recommendations of the \"Community Participation to Promote the Health of Rural Elderly\" project, shared the experiences of the counties involved in the project, and the expert advisory group conducted an evaluation of it. They acknowledged the project’s role as a model for areas in the central and western parts of the country as well as for ethnic minority regions in implementing the guidelines set by the State Council regarding the fight against poverty and the provision of targeted healthcare services; they also recognized the project’s contributions to improving rural elderly people’s awareness of health, their knowledge related to health, and their access to health services. Through the implementation of this project, society as a whole is mobilized to pay attention to the health of rural elderly people; limited charitable resources are directed toward those who need them most at the grassroots level, thereby meeting the healthcare needs of rural elders and yielding positive social and economic benefits. Four project units, including Jimunai County in Xinjiang and Tianjun County in Shanxi, reported on the progress of their projects respectively. In 2013, the Office for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs of the **National Health and Family Planning Commission** and the **Kardorff Foundation** signed a cooperation agreement titled “Community Participation to Promote the Health of Elderly People in Rural Areas.” Under this agreement, 16 towns in Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Shanxi were selected as project sites. The Kardorff Foundation provided funding of nearly 7 million RMB to promote the idea of improving the physical and mental well-being of local elderly people through activities such as encouraging their active participation and providing family-based health care services.