Emily Ying Yang Chan

Biography

Emily serves as Professor and Assistant Dean (Development) at Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is also Associate Director (External Affairs and Collaboration) at JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, Director at Centre for Global Health (CGH) and Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC). In 2016, CCOUC was recognised as International Centre of Excellence in Health and Community Resilience (ICoE-CCOUC) of Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR, a joint research programme of International Council for Science (ICSU), International Social Science Council (ISSC) and United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR)) and Emily has assumed ICoE-CCOUC directorship since then. She concurrently serves as Visiting Professor (Public Health Medicine) at Oxford University Nuffield Department of Medicine, Senior Fellow at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Visiting Scholar at FXB Center in Harvard University, and Honorary Professor at Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong. Emily is Co-chairperson of World Health Organization Thematic Platform for Health Emergency & Disaster Risk Management Research Group (WHO H-EDRM Research Group), member of Asia Science Technology and Academia Advisory Group of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR ASTAAG) and consultant in various technical consultation capacities for World Health Organization (WHO).

Awarded the 2007 Nobuo Maeda International Research Award of the American Public Health Association, Emily has published more than 200 international peer-reviewed academic/technical/conference articles and seven of these appeared in The Lancet and Bulletin of the World Health Organization. Her community public health resilience and disaster-health related papers have been used as policy references within the WHO and the Health Emergency Response Office of China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Emily has been involved in professional technical public health specialist training programmes of the Hong Kong SAR Government (2011-present), Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) (2013-2015) and the Health Emergency Response Office of China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (2013-2015). In addition, through the CCOUC China Ethnic Minority Health Project (EMHP) she established in 2009, her team has outreached almost 6,600 households in 23 remote, disaster-prone, resource-deficit rural settings in China and trained nearly 400 students and scholars from CUHK, HKU, Oxford University and Harvard University. Emily has also established research and training projects in Bhutan and Nepal. Moreover, the international online course “Public Health Principles in Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response” developed by her team to examine the application of public health principles in planning and responding to disaster and humanitarian crises has more than 4,000 students enrolled from six continents since its launch in May 2014.

Emily has extensive experience in serving as frontline emergency relief practitioner in the mid-1990s that spans across 20 countries. She was recognised as Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World (Junior Chamber International, 2005), Caring Physicians of the World (World Medical Association, Geneva, 2005), Leader of the Year 2015 (Community Service/Public Affairs/Environment and Conservation; Sing Tao News Corporation, 2016), and National Geographic Chinese Explorer (National Geographic Magazine, since 2016).

Education

BS, Johns Hopkins University, United States, 1996
SM PIH, Harvard University, United States, 1998
MBBS, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2003
MD, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2011
Fellow, Faculty of Public Health, United Kingdom, 2011
Fellow, Hong Kong Academy of Medicine, Hong Kong, 2011

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Disaster and humanitarian medicine
Climate change and health
Global and planetary health
Violence and injury epidemiology
Remote and rural health
Implementation and translational science
Health needs and programme impact evaluation
Evidence-based medical and public health interventions in resource deficit settings

Personal Interests

Collecting books and maps
Photography
Travelling for both work and leisure purposes

Websites

• CUHK Faculty of Medicine

• Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC)

• Collaborating Centre for Oxford University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response (CCOUC): Introductory video

• Developing Disaster Preparedness and Resilience in Rural China with Harvard University

• Emily gave a 14-minute presentation at the Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction at Sendai of Japan (14-18 March 2015)

• Harvard University

• Oxford University Nuffield Department of Medicine Podcast

• The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)

• University of Oxford

Books

Articles

Photos