13 September 2023
CUHK Neuroscientist to Receive The Third International Health Policy Fellowship
Lighting Way to Scientifically-driven Health Policies Amidst Global Rise in Ageing Populations
Dr. Kim Chow Hei-man, Assistant Professor from the School of Life Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), has been selected as the third recipient of the International Health Policy Fellowship by the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (NAM). The Fellowship Program aims to train and nurture global health policy scholars who can put forth solutions to critical health challenges facing the world today and in the future.
Professor Chow’s research focuses on studying mechanisms underlying pathological brain aging and related neurodegenerative disorders. Her projects aim at delineating how the body metabolic status affects the brain central metabolism, leading to elevated risks of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. With the support of the Fellowship, she will embark on a two-year Fellowship, spending 25% of her time residing in Washington, D.C., U.S. to learn about the organisation activities at the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and select a National Academies report to examine what could bridge her ongoing research focus to the level of health care policies.
The Patron and Special Advisor of the CUHK Centre for Bioethics (CBioE), Dr. Edgar Cheng, who has been the grantor for the NAM International Health Policy Fellowship Program since its inception in 2017, congratulated Professor Chow for being selected as the third Fellow from CUHK for the Fellowship Program. CUHK Members of the Nomination Committee of the Fellowship Program comprising Dr. Edgar Cheng, Prof. Tai-fai Fok (Chairman of CBioE Advisory Board), Prof. Wai-yee Chan (Pro-Vice-Chancellor/Vice President (Strategic Developments)), Dr. Derrick Au (Honorary Advisor of CBioE), and Prof. Roger Chung (Co-Director of CBioE) were grateful for the good news and appreciated the support of NAM and the CUHK Faculty of Medicine.
Dean of Science, Professor Chunshan Song, was excited to learn the good news, “It is indeed wonderful news to learn that Professor Kim Chow has been selected as the Third NAM International Health Policy Fellow. She has demonstrated exceptional commitment to her research and teaching, and has also served as a role model for young scientists through her active engagement in the Faculty’s Women in Science Series and the Hong Kong Laureate Forum’s activities. We wish her a fruitful fellowship and continued success.”
About NAM International Health Policy Fellowship Program
Established in 2017, the NAM’s first-ever International Health Policy Fellowship Program, in collaboration with CUHK Centre for Bioethics, seeks early- to mid-career scholars in the fields of bioethics, medical ethics and law, economics and health policy, and health care who are interested in — and committed to — improving care and access to care for patients in domestic and global health care systems.
Two CUHK Public Health Scholars Awarded the Inaugural and Second International Health Policy Fellowships in 2018 & 2021
Professor Roger Chung and Professor Vincent Chung, Associate Professors of the Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, CUHK Faculty of Medicine, were the awardees of the Fellowship Program in the past two cohorts.
The inaugural scholar Professor Roger Chung began his fellowship in 2018. He contributed to the work of the National Academies’ Global Coordination, Partnerships, and Financing: A Global Initiative for Advancing Pandemic and Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Preparedness and Response consensus study, released in November 2021. He gave a presentation on “Global Coordination on Vaccines to Counter Pandemic Threats: Key Messages and Implications for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region” at the NAM International Health Policy Fellowship Seminar co-organised by NAM and CUHK on Zoom on 23 February 2022 to share a summary of the report’s recommendations. He worked on the fellowship project manuscript contextualising the topic of the influenza study to HKSAR, China. He also worked on the NAM Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity project and served as an organizing committee member of the Workshop on Social, Behavioral, and Environmental Enablers for Healthy Longevity held in Washington DC in November 2019. He completed his fellowship in 2022.
The fellowship of the second scholar Professor Vincent Chung commenced in September 2021. Being the current International Health Policy Fellow, Professor Chung has been making contributions to the NAM Leadership Consortium’s Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct (AICC) project which aims to synthesize current best practices in implementing AI in healthcare from international literature published between 2018-2023 and guidelines developed by professional bodies/specialty societies. The SHIFT (Sustainability, Human centeredness, Inclusiveness, Fairness, and Transparency) framework will be used to map the synthesized recommendations. Professor Chung wishes to identify areas with less/no recommendations, of which new recommendations to address less developed issues could be formulated.
For more information about the Program, please refer to:
