Featured Doctor

LAM, Prof Cindy

Hong Kong – WWPMH Asia Pacific regional vice chair

What work do you do now?

I am clinical professor and Head of the Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care, of the University of Hong Kong. I have worked for 30 years from the beginning in 1985, to develop the family medicine and primary care undergraduate programme and family medicine research. My research interests are evaluation of quality and outcome of care, and patient-reported outcomes.

I am Chief Censor of the Hong Kong College of Family Physicians, involved in assuring the quality of training and examination of family medicine trainees. I continue to practice family medicine serving public primary care patients in Hong Kong. My special clinical interests are chronic diseases and mental health.

Other interesting things you have done?

I developed the six-year specialist in family medicine training programme, in Hong Kong, from 1994 to 1997. I established a Department of Family Medicine in the HKU-Shenzhen Hospital, in China, to pilot the general practice led care model, as part of health care reform in China, in 2012.

I collaborated with senior academics from Universities in Australia, Mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong to form the Asia-Pacific Academic Primary Care Group (AAPCG), to nurture emerging scholars in family medicine and primary care, in 2018. We had the inaugural meeting in Hong Kong in June, 2018, and the AAPCG scholars will present their work a symposium in the 2019 Asia Pacific WONCA Conference, in Kyoto.

Why your interest in the WP Mental health?

Many patients in Asia present with psychosomatic symptoms to primary care but receive insufficient care for their mental health problems. I hope we can engage, enable and empower primary care doctors in our region to manage the large number of patients with mental health problems effectively.

What are your interests outside work?

Reading, knitting and travel.