Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

134 related courses were offered in the 2021–22 academic year.

The University is committed to providing a safe and healthy environment for its members and visitors.  Its University Health Service is charged to provide the university community with high quality primary health care and health education.  CUHK has established a Committee on Health Promotion and Protection to maintain general health on campus and to provide advice on preventive and infection control measures that may need to be taken in response to local and global infectious diseases.  Vaccination programmes and health seminars are conducted regularly to promote a healthy lifestyle for CUHK members.

Eyes are supposed to reveal our true character, and they can certainly be windows on our health.  Professor Benny Zee’s team from the Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care has developed a convenient, non-invasive and painless Automatic Retinal Image Analysis (ARIA) technology that can quickly assess the risk of autism spectrum disorder simply by analysing the fundus images of children’s eyes.  This technology will allow diagnoses to be made much more quickly, and enable children with autism to receive early intervention.

Insomnia has a strong familial aggregation.  Adolescents with a parent who had chronic insomnia are three times more likely to develop insomnia than those without a positive family history.  A cross-border collaboration involving CUHK, the University of Hong Kong, and the Université Laval (Quebec City, Canada) conducted the world’s first randomised controlled trial of a brief insomnia prevention programme for at-risk adolescents.  The risk of developing insomnia fell by 71% over the 1-year follow-up period under this prevention programme.

An interdisciplinary research team at CUHK has compiled Asia’s first report card on physical activity for children and youth with special educational needs (SEN).  The report noted that children and young people with SEN in Hong Kong did not take enough exercise, and their physical activity level was far lower than that of their normal counterparts.  Based on the results, the research team put forward recommendations to promote physical activity opportunities at schools among children and youth with SEN in Hong Kong.

CUHK’s Wellness and Counselling Centre, staffed by psychologists and professional counsellors, seeks to promote mental health and a caring culture on campus.  It helps students to overcome adjustment difficulties, derive success and satisfaction from their university experiences, and achieve personal growth and self-enhancement.  Besides providing psychological counselling directly, the Centre has set up a ‘uBuddies’ Peer Counselling Network so that students can share their concerns with other students.  It also spreads its message through its ‘uPals’ Wellness Promotion Team.  The University’s Employee Assistance Programme also provides a 24-hour hotline service for staff members, so that they can ask for relevant information or seek professional personal counselling.

In collaboration with AXA Hong Kong and Oxford VR, the ‘Yes I Can’ initiative, a ground-breaking immersive mental health therapy programme was launched to treat people that suffer from anxious social avoidance.  Based on a cognitive therapy approach, people gain more confidence to cope with those situations they may usually avoid in real life through completing a series of graded tasks in virtual reality environment coached by a virtual therapist.

The CUHK Medical Centre (CUHKMC) is Hong Kong’s first non-profit private teaching hospital.  With a social mission to bridge the service gaps between private and public healthcare in Hong Kong, CUHKMC is dedicated to offering quality healthcare service at affordable and transparent package prices.  The centre is wholly owned by the University, and all surpluses from healthcare services will be ploughed back to the hospital for hospital development and the Faculty of Medicine of CUHK for research and teaching.

The Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology organized the ‘Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Technology (SMART) Fun Day 2021’ on 21 August 2021 with the aim of promoting sports medicine in the community.  Professional health and sports knowledge such as sports injury prevention methods were shared with the public through more than 50 lectures, workshops and sports exhibitions.