Dr Kai-ning Cheong, NAM-HKU Fellow in Global Health Leadership for the 2020/21 cohort, will deliver her presentation entitled, “Innovation and Integration as Strategies for Transforming Paediatric Health Ecosystems - Pathways towards Precision, Equity, Sustainability, and Holistic Communities in Hong Kong” , with details as follows:

Co-hosted by the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the seminar will feature Dr Cheong’s project conducted as part of her global health leadership fellowship. She will discuss current evidence and future directions for effective strategies and policies that drive innovation, cross-sector integration, and transformation of paediatric health ecosystems.

Abstract

It is crucial to equip today’s children to face the multitude of challenges ahead: an aging population, scarcer resources for managing chronic diseases, the mental and behavioural health epidemic, and climate change, etc. Transitioning towards a comprehensive life-course based “Family Journey Model’ from birth, and investing in long-term value-based outcomes, are essential paradigm shifts to implementing systematic change from within health systems themselves.

More resilient, adaptable, cost-effective, less fragmented health systems can be built by aligning timely health screening programmes, proactive health promotion and disease prevention, early intervention and integrated care, and with the dynamic developmental, socio-economic and family needs that change over life. Dr Cheong’s project examines how leveraging healthcare financing, strengthening partnerships (primary-secondary-tertiary care, community-school, public-private), workforce diversification and optimisation, and innovative use of digitalisation platforms and AI data, can all accelerate models of vertical, horizontal and longitudinal integration across health, social welfare, education, and tech sectors. When built in conjunction with greener cities, these integrated models move us from “No Child Left Behind” to “Every Child Striding Forward”, and improve life-long individual, population and planetary health outcomes.

Co-creation of shared legislative, policy, organisational, funding and governance pathways empowers the synergistic intersect of holistic community-centered primary / secondary care, with tertiary / quaternary care (interdisciplinary care models, newborn screening, novel genomic diagnostics and precision therapeutics). Adapting these international experiences to our local regional context, Dr Cheong explores strategies which could translate into reality our vision of accessible, inclusive, sustainable, equitable and truly impactful paediatric health system transformation here in Hong Kong.

About Dr Kai-ning Cheong
Dr Kai-ning Cheong is a specialist in Paediatric Immunology, Infectious Diseases and Allergy, with training in Paediatric Rheumatology. She is an Associate Consultant in Paediatric Rheumatology and Immunology at the Hong Kong Children’s Hospital, and is an Honorary Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. She obtained her DTM&H from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 2014, and her MPH from the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong in 2022.

Dr Cheong is passionate about overcoming the barriers to universal and equitable healthcare access, through convening global cross-sectoral engagement that drives strategies and policies for health systems transformation. With diverse work experiences in both the developing and the developed world, she has spearheaded a team to develop and run a paediatric field hospital with humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) in South Sudan during the civil war (2016); and worked in gene therapy for primary immunodeficiencies at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital (UK) as a Bill Marshall Memorial Fund Fellow (2017). Since 2019 she has coordinated a multidisciplinary team on a novel integrated and holistic healthcare service delivery model for immunology and rheumatology patients at the new Hong Kong Children’s Hospital, and received the D.H. Chen Clinical Research Fellowship for work in deep immunophenotyping and genotyping of complex immunodysregulatory disorders. Since 2014 she has co-founded and led successful partnership programmes that bridge the gap between public healthcare needs and private healthcare resources, and continues advocacy and fundraising for Doctors Without Borders UK whilst off active field duty.

Through health policy training provided by the NAM-HKU Fellowship in Global Health Leadership, Dr Cheong aspires to translate into reality her vision of transforming health systems to build accessible, inclusive, integrated, interdisciplinary, ‘treat-to-target’ service models at the intersect of precision medicine and holistic community-centred care. To improve life-course health screening, promotion, outcomes, disease prevention and ultimately planetary health, partnerships with school and community co-creators must be strengthened and supported by innovative technology that is sustainable, equitable, and impactful. She is currently a NAM fellow on the NAM committee for “Improving the Health and Wellbeing of Children and Youth through Health Care System Transformation”, and is translating these models to the regional Asian-Pacific context. In 2024 she received the “Future Champions in Global Health Research Program” climate change fellowship representing NAM and the UK Academy of Sciences, on their first collaborative consensus project on climate change and health equity.

Programme
Please view here for the tentative programme.

Discussion Panel
	Panelist Dr Andrew Bazemore Senior Vice President of Research and Policy, American Board of Family Medicine Co-Director, Center for Professionalism & Value in Health Care   View biography
	Panelist Dr Marla E. Salmon Professor, Global Health; Professor, Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing; Adjunct Professor, Evans School, University of Washington   View biography
	Moderator Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta Robert Harding Chair in Global Child Health & Policy; Co-Director, SickKids Centre for Global Child Health; Senior Scientist, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children Professor, Departments of Paediatrics, Nutritional Sciences and Public Health, University of Toronto Distinguished University Professor & Founding Director, Institute for Global Health & Development, The Aga Khan University South-Central Asia, East Africa and United Kingdom   View biography

Dr Victor Dzau President, National Academy of Medicine

Professor David Bishai Director and Clinical Professor, School of Public Health,The University of Hong Kong

Registration

Please register here by October 23 (Wed), HKT.

A Zoom link will be provided to the registrants prior to the event.

About the Fellowship
Please view here for more details about the Fellowship programme.

Enquiry

For enquiries, please contact sphevent@hku.hk.