Dr Gan Quan has been appointed Director of The Union China Office, while former Director Dr Lin Yan will continue his work with The Union as a Senior Advisor.
Dr Gan Quan
Dr Lin Yan
The Union is pleased to announce that Dr Gan Quan has been appointed Director of The Union China Office in Beijing, while former Director Dr Lin Yan will continue his work with The Union as a Senior Advisor on TB and other public health issues in China and the Region.
Dr Gan joined The Union as a Senior Project Officer in 2009 to manage the tobacco control grants funded through the Bloomberg Initiative Against Tobacco Use. He became a Technical Advisor in 2011, expanding his role to include activities ranging from developing a campaign against light and mild cigarettes to designing, coordinating and conducting policy research. Dr Gan holds a BS in Environmental Science from Nankai University and graduate degrees in Environmental Health (MS) and Public Health (PhD) from the University of California, Berkeley. He also completed a post-doctoral fellowship on tobacco control research at the University of California, San Francisco.
As Director of The Union China Office, Dr Gan will be responsible for the overall management of the Beijing office, the implementation of Union public health programmes in China and ongoing relations with national and international partners and donors in China.
Dr Lin Yan completed his medical training at Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences and his MPH at Beijing Medical University. Prior to joining The Union, he had extensive experience as a physician, professor, administrator for the Ministry of Health, and TB Technical Officer for the World Health Organization and Canadian government supported projects.
Dr Lin joined The Union as a Technical Officer in 2005 to support FIDELIS TB case-finding projects in 13 Chinese provinces. These projects, together with others, led to an increase in the new smear-positive TB case detection rate from 30% to 70% by the end of the project in 2009. He also helped establish The Union China Office and served first as Deputy Director, then Director between 2007 and 2013.
In addition to his ongoing work as a Senior Advisor for The Union, Dr Lin is Principal Investigator for diabetes/TB bidirectional screening in community settings in Kunming and Technical Advisor to the Family Health International Greater Mekong Sub-region MDR-TB Control Project funded by USAID.
“Over the past ten years, The Union has become a highly respected organisation in China and a trusted partner to the government and many national and international partners”, said José Luis Castro, Interim Executive Director of The Union. “This success is due to the expertise and leadership of both Dr Lin and Dr Gan, and we know they will continue to make outstanding contributions in their new roles”.