China will gear up for more equitable, unified and coordinated public health and family planning services for the country’s migrant population, said Wang Pei’an, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, at a national meeting held in Anhui province on June 30.

The meeting, the first of its kind, mapped out plans to improve the basic health and family planning services for migrants in the conceivable future in a bid to answer the growing call for human-centered urbanization.

Wang said it’s high time to find a new way to better manage these services for migrants, as implemented during the third plenum of the Party’s 18th Central Committee last November.

The migrant population has reached 245 million to date, accounting for 18 percent of the country’s total population. That number will only increase amid ongoing industrialization and urbanization, which is expected to have a bigger sway on China’s economic development and social stability.

The country has vowed to expand basic public health and medical services to the entire population by 2020, and governments of all levels have been actively engaged in public health projects that have benefited more people in recent years. But services for the migrant population remain the network’s weakest link.