To deepen educational cooperation and academic exchanges in public health between China and Canada, and to advance the development of an international talent cultivation system, Dean Laura McDougall of the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta and Dean Liu Xiaodong of the School of Public Health at Wenzhou Medical University held an in-depth strategic dialogue on June 27. The two deans engaged in extensive discussions on global public health trends, international talent development, the enhancement of the joint China-Canada MPH program, and collaborative research innovation. Their talks were closely aligned with the needs of global health governance, and they jointly explored new pathways for the coordinated development of Chinese and foreign public health schools in the new era.

During the dialogue, both sides shared cutting-edge development concepts and practical experiences within the new landscape of global health governance. Dean McDougall drew on Canada’s public health system development, policy implementation, and management expertise to offer her unique insights into cultivating international public health leadership. She identified the core challenges that the global public health sector will face over the next decade and analyzed the realworld bottlenecks in advancing health equity worldwide. She pointed out that the intertwining pressures of population aging, rising chronic diseases, and climaterelated public health risks demand accelerated reform of global public health education systems. Universities must break down the barriers between theoretical instruction and frontline practice, and focus on developing wellrounded, applicationoriented, and innovative public health professionals who possess both strategic thinking and implementation capabilities.

Dean Liu Xiaodong, in turn, presented the context of China’s modernization of its public health system and the deepening integration of medical care and prevention. He highlighted the distinctive features and achievements of his school, as well as the positioning, curriculum design, competitive advantages, and current progress of the ChinaCanada joint MPH program. He emphasized that public health issues know no borders, and that global health governance requires joint efforts from all countries. Chinese and foreign public health schools should break down geographical, resource, and academic barriers, and leverage collaborative educational platforms to share highquality courses, faculty, research platforms, and practice bases. Through such cooperation, they can jointly build a modern public health talent training system that is internationally aligned and locally relevant.

The two deans also held consultations on improving the quality and efficiency of the joint MPH program, exchanging views on specific cooperation areas including curriculum codevelopment, faculty and student exchanges, joint research, internship base connectivity, and regular academic communication. They reached multiple consensus points. Looking to the future upgrade of the program, they agreed on a unified approach: to deeply integrate Canada’s advanced public health management experience with China’s grassroots practice cases, thereby iteratively optimizing the teaching system; to establish integrated onlineoffline exchange channels for joint lectures, academic seminars, and studentfaculty interactions; and to open twoway internship pathways between China and Canada, allowing students to gain immersive experience in public health practice in both countries, broaden their perspectives, and strengthen their competencies.

This strategic dialogue between the deans of the two public health schools represents a pivotal step in deepening the longterm cooperation between the two institutions. Moving beyond the perspective of a single program, it takes a macrolevel view of global public health development and outlines a comprehensive, longterm, and allround cooperation framework between the two schools. Both deans concurred that international cooperation between institutions should not be confined to talent cultivation, but should also focus on joint research addressing common global public health challenges. Through educational and talent exchanges, they aim to facilitate mutual learning of governance experiences and complement each other’s technical resources between China and Canada.

Going forward, the two schools will fully implement the consensus reached during this dialogue, steadily advance the standardized and highquality development of the joint MPH program, and continue to leverage the international cooperation platform to open up new dimensions and spaces for collaborative development in the field of public health between China and Canada.