AAFMUA Semiannual Report, August 2000


American Association of Fujian Medical University Alumni

Thanks to the enthusiastic support and unremitting effort by many of you, the organization has achieved great success since its official establishment early this year. Now it is time for us to say Thank You again and report to you, our family members, the working progress in AAFMUA.

We have recently edited and updated a directory of AAFMUA for alumni. With this directory in hand we are able to communicate with classmates and schoolmates whom we did not meet or talk to for many years. AAFMUA would like to extend our great appreciation to those alumni who contributed their time and money to make this very useful directory available. We have set up and frequently updated our web site (www.aafmua.org, please bookmark it for your frequent visit). By this modern communication tool we have been able to provide our alumni the important or interesting information about AAFMUA, FMU, our hometowns, job opportunity (see Bulletin Board on our web site), and to exchange our experience and ideas, and help each other.

In March 2000, AAFMUA successfully invited a delegation of FMU and its affiliated hospitals to visit six first class Universities and NIH in the U.S. and met more than one hundred of our alumni. During the U.S. visit of FMU delegation, FMU appointed 35 U.S. alumni as Guest Professors, and an interim agreement on clinical and scientific exchange between FMU and AAFMUA was signed by both parties. This agreement will serve as an engine to promote the exchange of clinical medicine, education, and biomedical research between FMU and the American universities and hospitals. Recently, eight of our alumni, Drs. Shidu Yan, Qing Lin, Jinna Wei, Yangheng Fu, Xuanqi Zhang, Jizhen Lin, Lurong Zhang and Zhengbo Huang visited FMU and its affiliated hospitals and gave clinical and research seminars there. After coming back to U.S.A., several alumni also provided many suggestions to AAFMUA. This valuable feedback will definitely improve our future work in the academic exchange. Drs. Shidu Yan (University of Columbia) and Ke-he Ruan (University of Taxes) have recently accepted two visiting scholars from FMU to their research laboratories, and several of our alumni who are in professor positions in the universities are also planning to accept visiting scholars from FMU to their laboratories. We strongly believe that this academic exchange will significantly benefit both FMU and research institutes in the U.S.

One of the AAFMUA’s major tasks is to serve our alumni and the communities we live in. Since the establishment of AAFMUA, the organization has provided a lot of information to our alumni, including information on finance, jobs, medical board, as well as temporary housing. Dr. Ling Zheng, vice president of AAFMUA and a New York State licensed acupuncturist, has provided free medical consultation and acupuncture services to 326 American and Chinese patients at Chuang Yan Monastery, NY. Dr. Zhengbo Huang, Director of Clinical Medicine Committee of AAFMUA, Director of Geriatric service and attending Physician of New York Medical College, gave a seminar on “Live Longer and Healthier” in the same place. He also gave a seminar on Alzheimer Disease to the physicians in Greater New York area, providing the updated information about the treatment in geriatric population. AAFMUA will continually offer our communities these free medical services and are now planning to arrange more medically licensed alumni to participate in these warmly welcome activities. In past few months, AAFMUA also organized several alumni reunion parties in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Maryland, providing the exciting opportunities for our alumni to meet new and old friends who live nearby or far away, to welcome new members, and to say good-bye to those who would begin new jobs in other states. These activities also provided an opportunity to exchange the experience in our work, study, research and family life, and enhanced our friendship. AAFMUA will organize more such activities in the near future. We strongly encourage our alumni to provide us any suggestions so that we can serve you better. AAFMUA recently also attended to many guests from FMU, including Chongxian Liao (vice president of Union Hospital), Pengfei Zhang (vice president of FMU), Yongkun Lin (Chairman of Dept. of Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital), Daren Li (Former Chairman of Dept. of Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital).

The great success achieved by AAFMUA could not have been possible without the continuous support of our alumni. Many of our alumni have been actively participating in a variety of activities and contributing their precious time and money to support the organization. We are deeply grateful to our Honorary Presidents, Drs. Yun-yin Shen and Guangyi Xu for their generous spiritual and financial support to AAFMUA. Our sincere appreciation is also extended to many of our alumni who pay the membership fee or donate money to support our organization (for details, please visit our web site).

The endeavor made by AAFMUA has been highly appreciated by our alumni. Now more and more alumni have joined in our voluntary but very important services. We have recently welcome Drs. Jingsheng Zheng and Fan Lin to our Clinical Medicine Committee, Drs. Ke-he Ruan, Qing Lin, Jinna Wei, and Songcang Chen to our Scientific Research Committee, and Dr. Yongsheng Chen to the Financial Service Division. AAFMUA has recently appointed Drs. Xuan-Qi Zhang (attending physician of Harvard Medical School) and Defu Zeng (Senior Research Scientist of Stanford University) as Associate Secretary-Generals to strengthen our organization. We believe that with these new appointments AAFMUA will more effectively function to achieve our short-term and long-term goals. We are looking forward to your contributions to the organization. Your participation and suggestions are always welcome.