healthier. ‘A model or a partnership approach to public health is the future of our discipline – partnerships between scientific experts and people from the community, facing the facts about what the threats are, and creating the literacy to find solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic showed that we must involve local people in shared discussion and listen to their questions. It was always important for health officials to ask local residents what their concerns about the vaccines were and what it takes to work out social distancing and other safer strategies. Health officials need a platform to ask these questions. Public health systems need a place to allow a running conversation.’ This seems to be an opportune moment to better engage the community, as District Health Centres (DHCs) are being set up across the SAR. Professor Bishai sees the opportunity to leverage DHCs as community conversation platforms as well, to gather the community’s ‘contextual wisdom’ to create a healthier community together. ‘My vision for the DHCs is for them to be a platform for community conversation, outreach and discussion with community members, schools and NGOs. What are the threats to our health? What do we know about our blood pressure, tobacco control, ageing and loneliness, and what can we all do about these issues? Once we share with people an understanding of the threats to their health, they can come up with the part of the solutions that work for them. It is not just expertise from scientists, but expertise in the context of the lives of families and local residents about how they can implement better, healthier strategies,' said Professor Bishai. To do so, Professor Bishai suggests establishing contractual obligations between DHC health providers and the Primary Healthcare Authority to host townhall meetings and community-sharing sessions, for instance, to gather a list of community assets and strengths and to mobilise student and community participation to learn what precisely the community needs from primary healthcare, and eventually to achieve the ‘community-oriented outreach augmentation of comprehensive primary healthcare’. In a city where medical resources have been concentrated on hospital care, it is not uncommon for people of Hong Kong to see healthcare as ‘going to the doctor when sick’. ‘Primary Healthcare is that plus a community platform to discuss assets in the community that can ↑↓Professor Bishai and the SPH team at the Master of Public Health (MPH) Orientation Week. 貝教授和公共衞生 學院團隊參與公共衞生 迎新周。 ‘A model or a partnership approach to public health is the future of our discipline – partnership between scientific experts with people from the community, facing the facts about what the threats are, and creating the literacy to find solutions.’ Professor David Makram Bishai 31 HKUMed News Winter 2023
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