KP Chen Memorial Lectures in Public Health
The KP Chen Memorial Lecture honors late Professor Kung-Pei Chen (1917-1978), a founding father of Taiwan’s public health education. Prof. KP Chen served as the Director of Institute of Public Health at National Taiwan University (NTU) for 17 years in 1956-1972 and established Department of Public Health (the first undergraduate public health degree in Asia) in the College of Medicine of NTU in 1972. Under his leadership, the Institute and Department had cultivated many public health professionals, educators, researchers and leaders in Taiwan. This formidable force of public health has helped Taiwan to solve many major public health issues, including the identification of arsenic intoxication as the cause of black-foot disease, iodization of salt to prevent goiter, and advocacy of National Health Insurance (eventually leading to its implementation in 1995), and the publication of Taiwan’s first township-specific cancer mortality map. Prof. KP Chen was active in global health and has participated in WHO programs in Vietnam, Korea, and Philippine in his career.
The Institute and Department have been expanded to an independent college in NTU, College of Public Health (CPH), since 1993. Notably, NTUCPH has just been accredited by Council on Education for Public Health (founded and located in the U.S.) in July 2017, the first school in Asia, also the first one outside North America. KP Chen Preventive Medicine Foundation established “KP Chen Memorial Lecture in Public Health” in NTU-CPH in memory of Professor Kung-Pei Chen’s 100th Birth Anniversary in 2017. This annual lectureship is awarded to a prominent international individual who has made a significant and unique contribution to contemporary public health.
