CW Chu College The Chinese University of Hong Kong eNewsletter

First High Table Dinner: StandTall 2008–2019—What I Learned from My Patients (Dr LAW Sheung Wai)

This High Table Dinner was held on 10 September 2019. The guest of honour, Dr LAW Sheung Wai, is Consultant and Deputy Chief of Service from the Department of Orthopaedic Rehabilitation, Tai Po Hospital and awardee of Hong Kong Humanity Award 2017. As an orthopedic surgeon devoted to humanitarian work, he spoke about how the StandTALL Project launched after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 helped reinvigorate the lives of many victims who lost their limbs in the disaster.

Second High Table Dinner: Pain and the Brain: Fears and Phantoms (Prof Nicholas RAWLINS)

The College welcomed Prof Nicholas RAWLINS, Master of Morningside College and Emeritus Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, as the guest of honour at this High Table Dinner on 23 October 2019. In his sharing, Prof RAWLINS introduced the findings that anxiety caused by anticipation of further pain intensifies the level of pain that people experience. He also explained how direct manipulation of the brain circuits can benefit chronic pain patients and phantom pain sufferers.

For more details about these two High Table Dinners, please refer to Pages 67–68 of the Report of the Master 2019.

Third High Table Dinner: Interdisciplinary Global Field Experiential Teaching and Learning: Ethnic Minority Health Project of CCOUC (Prof CHAN Ying Yang Emily)

The guest of honour of this High Table Dinner on 16 January 2020 was Prof CHAN Ying Yang Emily, Professor and Associate Director (External Affairs and Collaboration), of The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, CUHK; and Head of the Division of Global Health and Humanitarian Medicine. She concurrently holds the positions as Professor and Assistant Dean (External Affairs) of the Faculty of Medicine; Director of the Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC); and Director, CUHK Centre for Global Health. As a doctor also qualified in Public Health and Biomedical Engineering, she has been dedicated to providing humanitarian aid, and has participated in frontline work for over 30 humanitarian and medical missions in different NGOs.

At the dinner, Prof CHAN introduced the establishment and work of CCOUC, which has carried out research, training and community knowledge transfer in the area of disaster and medical humanitarian response in Greater China and the Asia-Pacific Region since 2011. CCOUC boasts an interdisciplinary team of staff who have a wide range of expertise apart from medicine and public health, such as nutritional sciences, public policy, geography and resource management, and international relations.

The Centre offers curriculum supported by enhanced research, such as that on the relationship between climate change and health, and provides learning materials via mobile applications and online courses. Students participate in their Global Field Classroom, where they can transform theory into practice by localising humanitarian response plans in villages in Greater China and the Asia-Pacific Region. One of the flagship field-based programmes in China of the Centre is Ethnic Minority Health Project, which covers 14 natural hazard-prone villages inhabited by ethnic minorities in eight provinces.

Among the achievements of CCOUC, Prof CHAN is most impressed by many of her students setting up their own NGOs and her colleagues initiating at other institutions programmes similar to those offered by CCOUC. She hopes that the work of CCOUC can equip the public with knowledge about disaster and medical humanitarian response and inspire more people to devote to the meaningful deeds.