As China faces mounting questions regarding its food and drug safety, the country’s minister of health, Dr. Chen Zhu, is set to receive an honorary degree this week from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Dr. Chen, 55, a hematologist who began his career as a medic in rural China, will travel to New York to accept the award, to be conferred at the school’s graduation ceremony on Wednesday. Appointed in 2007, Dr. Chen is seen as an agent of change among health experts, who said he has advocated for increased transparency in the wake of the 2003 SARS epidemic, as well as for better access to health care across China.

During his visit, Dr. Chen also will be recognized for his contributions in the field of cancer research. He will be feted by the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, housed at Mount Sinai, at a luncheon tomorrow at the United Nations. The foundation, which is focused on developing treatments that “reprogram” cancer cells, this year is marking 25 years of collaboration with Dr. Chen and the Shanghai Institute of Hematology.

“He’s a real straight shooter person who wants to do the job properly,” the foundation’s director, Dr. Samuel Waxman, said during a recent interview at his office. The two met in the 1980s when Dr. Chen worked in Dr. Waxman’s laboratory. Dr. Chen was among the researchers who developed a treatment for acute promyelocytic leukemia, Dr. Waxman said. “I would only predict that this man has the commitment to bring the best of health and science to his country,” he said.

In the position for less than a year, Dr. Chen is visiting amid tumultuous times for China in the realm of food, drug, and toy safety.

In March, the Food and Drug Administration detected a “contaminant” in samples of the blood-thinning drug Heparin that officials traced to China. In the past year, American companies have recalled toys, toothpaste, and other products after learning the products were tainted.

Dr. Chen’s trip also coincides with a viral outbreak in China that has killed 22 children and infected 3,600 others in the Anhui Province. First reported last week, the outbreak began in March. In recent days, some have criticized local health officials for the reporting delay, which they said was reminiscent of the government’s response to the SARS epidemic in 2003.

Despite the government’s attempts to improve transparency since then, observers said Dr. Chen faces significant obstacles.

“I think it’s probably fair to say that the ministry and its capacity and its ability to oversee the health system and provide public health monitoring and surveillance or regulation is seen with some skepticism, because it has a fairly checkered history,” an assistant professor of health policy at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Michael Gusmano, said.

Under the best of circumstances, Dr. Chen is charged with heading up a sprawling and troubled health care system responsible for treating 1.3 billion people, about 80% of whom lack health insurance. “His role is to guide the government’s creation of a new health care system for China,” the founder of the Children of China Pediatrics Foundation and the director of pediatric orthopedics at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, Dr. David Roye, said.

“I think he is more an agent of change than an agent of obfuscation,” Dr. Roye said, noting that the ministry is still evolving. “Compared to our country, it is still a black hole. Compared to what it was, it’s a lot better.”

At 55, Dr. Chen’s rise has been meteoric. A onetime automobile engineer, he is not a member of the Communist Party, according to reports by the Chinese governmental news agency, Xinhua.

Born in Shanghai, Dr. Chen began his medical career in the early 1970s, when he became a “barefoot doctor” who dispensed basic medical advice in rural China. He began his formal medical education in 1975 at Shanghai Second Medical University and earned a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1989. In 1990, he accepted a professorship at Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai. He later went on to leadership posts, serving as director of the Chinese National Human Genome Center in Shanghai and as vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Since taking office, Dr. Chen has championed health policies aimed at reducing barriers to care.

Shortly after being named health minister, he solicited proposals from consultants and international health experts on ways to improve the system. So far, his ministry has rolled out an insurance program available to residents of poor and rural areas. The government also has invested in community hospitals to alleviate the concentration of hospitals in urban areas.

Outside the Beijing Children’s Hospital, for example, a common sight is a line of patients that forms each morning, waiting to be seen.

“Even within urban areas of China, there’s a major problem of access,” Mr. Gusmano said. The country faces looming public health concerns, such as a rapidly aging population, but in large part the government has invested scant resources in the health care sector in recent years. “The health sector, until recently, had not grown like the rest of the economy,” Mr. Gusmano said.

Despite Dr. Chen’s best intentions, he and his colleagues could be thwarted in a power struggle with local authorities, Dr. Roye said.

“Their desire to be transparent and to be good stewards is not a question,” he said. “Beijing’s power is limited by the tremendous power in the provinces.”