From Price staff reports
Di Zhang, a Master of Health Administration student at the USC Price School of Public Policy, was named one of only six recipients statewide to earn the 2015 Cheng Foundation Scholarship.
The award recognizes select Chinese students across California who have demonstrated academic excellence, community dedication and leadership. The purpose of the scholarship is to help these students successfully complete their programs of study and to encourage them to make a contribution toward the development of local communities.
The awards ceremony was held in the office of the Chinese Consulate-General in Los Angeles in May. Each student was presented with a $5,000 scholarship, sponsored by Cathay Bank.
“I’m excited that Di Zhang’s accomplishments have been recognized through this prestigious scholarship,” said Professor Mike Nichol, who directs USC Price’s graduate programs in health. “His interests align well with many of the issues that both China and the U.S. will face as our populations age and require additional health and social resources.”
Zhang – who graduated with honors from the Hubei University of Chinese Medicine with a Bachelor of Medicine in Clinical Chinese and Western Medicine – completed an internship at the orthopedics department of Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, China, in 2014. He noted how the internship showed him “the importance of managed long-term care, which is often intertwined with healthcare policy and the distribution of healthcare resources.”
“As the aging issue becomes increasingly serious in both the U.S. and China, I would like to focus on the long-term care for the seniors — more specifically, focusing on how healthcare services for the seniors are conducted in the United States and what models and patterns are used in managed elderly care,” Zhang said.
“I am looking forward to bringing the advanced notion and managerial experience back to China and serve the ever increasing Chinese elderly population in the near future,” he added. “I also have strong interests in mobile healthcare.”
Currently, Zhang is working as an administrative resident in the patient experience office at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Among a wide range of duties in this role, Zhang is responsible for the preparation and on-site coordination of the facility’s patient experience rounds. He is also tasked with producing reports to measure compliance with UCLA Health’s patient-centered model practices, as well as the correlation between these practices and patient satisfaction.
Zhang credits USC Price’s MHA program with providing the opportunity “to look into the U.S. healthcare system from various perspectives and has inspired me to develop a global healthcare outlook. The Trojan network has also helped me connect with healthcare leaders in the Los Angeles area and find an internship in one of the best medical centers nationwide.”