Climate change and related disasters affect every region across the world, becoming important topics for public health and environmental health practice and posing huge challenge to sustainability. The environmental consequences of climate change, such as extreme temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, and rise of sea-level, are creating disaster risks and impacting on health and the public health system directly and indirectly. As the frequency and severity of climate-related disasters are both surging, there is an eminent need to prepare for unforeseeable events in order to better protect human health. Moreover, rapid urbanization complicates and exacerbates the public health impact of climate change (e.g. urban heat island effect and threat to urban lifeline infrastructure). This seminar will focus particularly on climate change-related disaster risks to human health and related response strategies in Hong Kong as a subtropical metropolis in Asia, employing the Health-EDRM framework to foreground health in disaster risk reduction.
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Date |
17 April 2023 (Monday) |
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Time |
12:00nn-1:30pm (HKT) |
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Topic |
“Climate Change, Disaster Risks and Public Health” |
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Speaker |
Prof Emily Chan, Assistant Dean (External Affairs) & Professor, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong |
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Moderator |
Prof Laurence Delina, Assistant Professor, Division of Environment and Sustainability, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology |
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Format |
In-person: Room 4621, Academic Building (Lift 31-32) |
Organised by the Interdisciplinary Programs Office
Professor Emily Chan is a clinical humanitarian doctor and global academic expert in public health and humanitarian medicine. Professor Chan has received academic and technical training in clinical medicine, engineering and public health. She serves as Professor and Assistant Dean (External Affairs) at Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and has been appointed as the CEO of GX Foundation since 2019. She concurrently holds academic appointments as Visiting Professor at Oxford University Nuffield Department of Medicine, Visiting Scientist at FXB Center of Harvard School of Public Health, Honorary Professor of Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at University of Hong Kong and Directors of Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC) and CUHK Centre for Global Health (CGH). Among these, CCOUC is recognized as one of the International Centre of Excellence (ICoE-CCOUC) of International Science Council’s Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) programme. Globally, she has served as the Global Co-chairperson of the WHO Thematic Platform for Health Emergency & Disaster Risk Management (Health-EDRM) Research Network since 2016 and as the Global Co-chairperson of the World Health Organization COVID-19 Research Roadmap Social Science Working Group since 2020. She is also a member of United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Asia-Pacific Science Technology and Academia Advisory Group (APSTAAG) and technical member of World Meteorological Organization SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 Task Team. Her research interests include disaster and humanitarian medicine, climate change and health, global and planetary health, Human Health Security and Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health-EDRM), remote rural health, implementation and translational science, ethnic minority health, injury and violence epidemiology, and primary care. In addition to having published more than 400 international peer-reviewed scientific articles and 14 textbooks, Professor Chan is an active humanitarian doctor throughout her professional career and has been leading frontline humanitarian operations in disasters and complex emergency contexts in more than 20 countries. She is recognized as National Geographic Chinese Explorer in 2016 and is a recipient of the 2004 Hong Kong Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award, 2005 Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World Award, 2005 Caring Physicians of the World Award, 2007 Hong Kong Humanity Award, 2017 UGC Teaching Award (Hong Kong) and the Second Prize of the 2018 National Teaching Achievement Award (Higher Education), China.
Climate change and related disasters affect every region across the world, becoming important topics for public health and environmental health practice and posing huge challenge to sustainability. The environmental consequences of climate change, such as extreme temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, and rise of sea-level, are creating disaster risks and impacting on health and the public health system directly and indirectly. As the frequency and severity of climate-related disasters are both surging, there is an eminent need to prepare for unforeseeable events in order to better protect human health. Moreover, rapid urbanization complicates and exacerbates the public health impact of climate change (e.g. urban heat island effect and threat to urban lifeline infrastructure). This seminar will focus particularly on climate change-related disaster risks to human health and related response strategies in Hong Kong as a subtropical metropolis in Asia, employing the Health-EDRM framework to foreground health in disaster risk reduction.