Faculty of Health and Social Sciences

Hong Kong is where East meets West. Like many Western countries and Mainland China, Hong Kong is seeing a rise in the prevalence of chronic diseases among the old and increasingly among the young. And like the West, Japan and the Mainland, Hong Kong faces health, social and economic challenges—and opportunities—arising from an ageing population. Yet, being located in a cosmopolitan city with a predominantly Chinese populace has proven inspirational to us, the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences (FHSS) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), since we can extrapolate the best from the East and the West to our advantage. The results are innovative education, research, knowledge transfer, and practices that not only fit the local context but also provide invaluable insights and applicability for societies elsewhere.

Our Faculty comprises the Department of Applied Social Sciences (APSS), the Department of Health Technology and Informatics (HTI), the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences (RS), the School of Nursing (SN), and the School of Optometry (SO). Our staff members are extremely active in international, national and local consortiums and professional organizations and include those who are or have been presidents of international bodies.

We are proud of our staff members who are inquisitive and innovative. Their teaching quality and methods are regularly recognised with international, national and local awards, while their research outputs are rated as world-class. In the latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2020 of publicly funded universities by Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee, our performance scores in some health science research areas were 4* or 3*, indicating they are “world leading” or “internationally excellent”. 24 of our scholars ranked among the world’s top 2% most-cited scientists based on career-long impact, according to a Stanford University study published in 2023. 

We also emphasise knowledge transfer to directly benefit society. Our staff’s research and consultancy findings are frequently turned into impactful, evidence-based protocols, programmes and inventions which are adopted by different types of organizations or win accolades. Our researchers have won top prizes at the prestigious International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva, such as in 2018 for the “Defocus Incorporated Multiple Segments” (DIMS) spectacle lens. The lens has since become a commercial success along with the research team’s Defocus Incorporated Segments Contact (DISC) lens invention for clinically controlling the progression of myopia in children. 

As a Faculty centred on health and well-being issues, we more than showed our mettle during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong. Our teachers quickly adapted their materials and created interactive tools for online learning, while our researchers proactively joined in the city’s efforts in combating COVID-19. Among our many Government-funded research projects were those that were using whole-genome sequencing to help identify SARS-CoV-2 strains and cut transmission chains in the territory; investigating long COVID-19 symptoms in survivors and developing an effective home rehabilitation exercise programme for them; examining socio-demographic and other factors that were contributing to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and health-protective behaviours; and inventing a new portable testing device for COVID-19 that is as accurate as gold-standard laboratory-based PCR testing but which can return results in less than half the time of PCR testing.

For more details about the major research areas of the Faculty, please visit FHSS’s website or contact Miss Amelia Or at amelia.or@polyu.edu.hk.