KE Spotlight - Community Engagement - HKU Knowledge Exchange

Knowledge Exchange Awards 2013

The Faculty Knowledge Exchange (KE) Awards were introduced in 2011 in order to recognize each Faculty's outstanding KE accomplishment that has made demonstrable economic, social or cultural impacts to benefit the community, business/industry, or partner organizations. Results of the 2013 Faculty KE Awards are now available.

HKU Faculty of Dentistry promotes school teachers training in Dental Emergencies

HKU Faculty of Dentistry found that very few teachers had the necessary know-how of appropriate "first-aid" actions in dental traumas, and Hong Kong has shown a serious lack of relevant teacher-training in the past decade. Partnered with the Anglican (Hong Kong) Primary Schools Council and the Hong Kong Council for Educational Administration, a HKU Student Knowledge Exchange Project Team, mentored by Dr Mike Leung and led by student Miss Tiffany Chan of the Faculty of Dentistry, have run 11 workshops to train primary and secondary school teachers on how to take emergency actions to handle dental traumas caused by falls and collisions that happen at schools. The workshops were attended by a total of 441 primary and secondary school teachers. This equipped the teachers with necessary knowledge to handle the real-life situations more confidently and could help minimize the damage made on students' teeth.

HKU dentists find that half of Hong Kong's preschoolers with tooth decay

HKU Faculty of Dentistry Dr C H Chu and his team found that roughly one half of Hong Kong's preschoolers aged four to six had an average of about two teeth per child contained dental caries, most of them were untreated cavities. The team also discovered that snacking frequency, dental visits, parents' oral health knowledge and family income were the most important factors affecting the preschoolers' dental health. Such findings imply that oral health promotion in kindergartens requires the involvement of not only the children, but also their parents and teachers. Joint efforts of the government and the dental professions are essential to tackle social inequality of dental health. More details of Dr Chu's and his team's effort on promoting oral health of preschoolers are available here.