The optimization of regional healthcare resource allocation is an essential component of China’s national health planning, which aims to identify an optimal solution to allocate healthcare resources under the budget constraints, so as to improve the accessibility and equity of healthcare services among nationwide communities as an indispensable contributor to the ultimate achievement of health promotion.

Based on the current states of China’s healthcare system and from the perspective of well-balanced regional developments, Professor Pan Jie’s team that consists of experienced scholars from West China School of Public Health, Sichuan University conducted a series of in-depth investigations to explore precise assessment and optimization analysis of healthcare resource allocation under China’s context. Through the adoption of multidisciplinary research paradigm and innovatively developed research methods, the team produced a list of high quality publications that shed light upon cutting-edge academic milestones in this research field, which specifically included: (1) An in-depth analysis was conducted to describe the spatial interactions between supply and demand within healthcare markets, which provided a more accurate picture to reflect residents’ actual behaviors in seeking healthcare services, thus contributing to the preciseness of evaluation outcomes reflective of the current states of healthcare resource allocation among different regions. (2) With the goal of promoting well-balanced regional developments, efforts were made towards the optimization of healthcare resource allocation from two dimensions, namely capacity optimization and location optimization. As indicated by outcomes from existing case studies based on simulated implementation of policies, a scientifically planned healthcare resource allocation strategy not only has great potential to mitigate the inequality issue among different regions, but also contributes to a higher level of allocation efficiency, even without changing the total amount of healthcare resources distributed across the nation. In addition, regional disparities should be comprehensively considered to inform decisions made upon the emergence of newly constructed healthcare institutions. By doing so, a higher cost effect can be achieved from a holistic perspective, as reflected by a maximized population coverage rate of healthcare services based on scientifically planned resource allocation towards wisely selected new healthcare institutions under region-specific contexts. All these findings highlighted the necessity of implementing a scientifically planned resource allocation strategy via top-level design at the central governmental level, so as to bridge the gap embedded among regions and further facilitate improved equity of healthcare and health promotion of the entire population.

The series of high-quality research not only provided evidence-based implications to inform strategies towards enhanced efficiency of regional health service governance and the achievement of accurate health decision making, but also provided potent evidences to support the well-rounded promotion of Healthy China Initiative via the establishment of an integrated health service system of high quality and efficiency.