Abstract: The World Health Organization (WHO) declared in 2020 the novel coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. In China, experts, scholars and other workers in the field of social work extensively participated in fighting against Covid-19. It was a large-scale intervention in public health emergency that happened in China for the first time in the course of social work. This intervention is also marked with existing features of China, namely, social work action embedded itself positively in the primary stage of the combat and assumed a new form, which was called “chimerism” by those specialists and scholars in the field of social work, during the regular epidemic prevention and control. From active embedment to chimerism, participatory action in the epidemic has become the elementary characteristic of social work. In other words, social work action is embedded in the original social structure and its chimerism can be seen in its cooperation and coordination with other main bodies. Embedment and chimerism are theoretical concepts indigenous to China. Guided by them, progress will be made in social policy that can gradually incorporate social work into governmental systems of public health service and emergency management. Meanwhile, vigorous embedment and chimerism will also become approaches that can be localized into China’s public health social work.

Key words: embedment, chimerism, public health, social work action, localization