This division consists mainly of public health physicians and those under-training for the Public Health Medicine specialty. Our division is responsible for the academic and vocational training of public health professionals in various levels, and the practice and research of common infectious and non-communicable diseases of public health importance in the local and global community. Examples in the three major areas of activities at the division are as follows:

Academic and vocational training of public health professionals in various levels:

This covers training on practice-oriented public health issues including basic public health principles, evidence-based practice, health promotion, health advocacy, field epidemiology and clinical epidemiology. Our students include public health medicine specialty trainees, postgraduate students in our MPH and other postgraduate programmes, undergraduate medical students, and students enrolled in other health-related programmes.

Public Health Practice activities:

Policy advisory input on important public health issues, including tobacco and alcohol control, childhood obesity, cancer screening, population mental health, health service delivery, and infectious disease surveillance of and responses to epidemic and emerging infectious diseases, to various organizations in the local, regional and international levels (WHO, China CDC; and various provincial and city level CDCs in PRC, the Health Bureau, Hospital Authority, Department of Health and Centre for Health Protection of the HKSAR government).

Health promotion activities in the local community. Examples included the FAMILY Project to promote family health and harmony, zero-time exercise to promote integration of exercise into daily life, Smart Family-Link project to enhance family service and promote family well-being, and various health promotion programmes in local schools for childhood obesity, healthy lifestyle, and prevention of influenza transmission.

Research activities:

Members of the division are involved in different major research projects and initiatives in both the Non-communicable Disease and Infectious Disease research clusters of the school, covering research areas ranging from tobacco and alcohol control, obesity, healthy living, family cohort, birth cohort, Guangzhou biobank, to cancer screening, population mental health, surveillance and control of influenza and other emerging infections. We recently also conducted a landscaping study to examine the development and progress of standardized residency training for primary health care doctors in China.