KE Spotlight - Community Engagement - HKU Knowledge Exchange

Dentistry’s Knowledge Exchange Dialogue 2018

The Faculty of Dentistry has recently published Knowledge Exchange Dialogue 2018, which features 14 KE projects conducted by faculty members and students in 2016-17. The stories were written by a group of students from the School of Communication of Hong Kong Baptist University as part of their practicum project.

Knowledge of Oral Health

Knowledge of Oral Health is an oral health brochure published by the Faculty of Dentistry for the general public. It consists of 74 articles that were published in am730 newspaper between 2015 and 2017.

HKU launches food app to help consumers make healthier choices in supermarkets

The HKU school of biological sciences and the George Institute for Global Health in Australia jointly developed an app called FoodSwitch HK to help consumers choose healthier food and drinks in the supermarket simply by scanning the barcode of a product. The app highlights the fat, salt, sugar and energy content of the product through a colour coded system and uses a star rating system to indicate the overall nutritious value. It also offers up a healthier alternative when available. The database contains nutrition information of 13,000 pre-packaged products in local supermarkets. Dr Jimmy Louie Chun-yu, assistant professor of food and nutritional science at HKU and a registered dietitian, said based on several studies, Hongkongers eat up to 10 grams of salt a day, twice the World Health Organisation's recommended daily intake. He hopes the new app can help consumers to make healthier choices.

Students smoking less, HKU study shows

An HKU School of Public Health study, commissioned by the Food and Health Bureau and conducted from November 2016 to June 2017, revealed that smoking prevalence among Primary Four to Six and Form One to Six students was 0.1% and 2.5% respectively, representing a drop of 0.1 and 0.2 percentage points compared to the 2014/15 survey. According to the latest Thematic Household Survey published by the Census and Statistics Department, conducted from June to September 2017, among teenagers aged between 15 and 19, daily cigarette smoking prevalence also decreased from 1.1% in 2015 to 1.0% in 2017.

Sociology UG Capstone Archive launched

The Department of Sociology has launched the UG Capstone Archive to showcase capstone projects produced by undergraduate students that aim to transform both society and our students.

Making Our City More Walkable for All

The HKUrbanLab, the research and knowledge exchange arm of the Faculty of Architecture at The University of Hong Kong, is working with Civic Exchange and the Hong Kong Council of Social Service on a project called ‘Walking with Wheels’, aimed at finding the best barrier-free routes for people in wheelchairs and those with prams and trolleys. Watch the full video.

HKU medical chemists discover peptic ulcer treatment metallodrug effective in “taming” superbugs

A research team led by Professor Sun Hongzhe of the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Dr Richard Kao Yi-Tsun of the Department of Microbiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, discovered an alternative strategy by repositioning colloidal bismuth subcitrate (CBS), an antimicrobial drug against Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) -related ulcer. The team revealed a bismuth-based antimicrobial drug for treating peptic ulcers can effectively paralyze multi-resistant superbugs, e.g. Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and Carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP), and significantly suppress the development of antibiotic resistance, allowing the lifespan of currently-used antibiotic to be largely extended. Director of the HKU Centre for Infection Dr Ho Pak Leung said CBS can disarm superbugs reducing them to almost sensitive strain which can be easily killed by commonly used Carbapenem antibiotics and is having a good potential for future clinical applications. A patent has been filed in the US for the discovery.