Weatherhead East Asian Institute Event
Please join us for a lecture with:
Terry Lum, Professor and Head of Department of Social Work and Social Administration
Hong Kong University
Moderated by:
Jinyu Liu, Assistant Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work
Columbia University
Event Summary: Depression is common among older adults and creates a substantial burden on individuals, caregivers, and healthcare system. In this talk, Prof. Terry Lum presents an innovative collaborative stepped care intervention that promotes the coordination between elderly center and community mental health center to provide nonpharmacological intervention to elders with mild to moderate level of depression.
The stepped care model was implemented in four districts in Hong Kong between September 2017 and February 2019. In each district, one community mental health center and one elderly center worked together to implement this stepped care model. A quasi-experimental design was used to study the effectiveness of this intervention. A total of 853 older adults completed the intervention and additional 500 elders were recruited as control. Based on a rich set of measures and multivariate analyses, this study found that the stepped care model was effective in reducing the levels of depression and anxiety among Chinese older people. Prof. Lum will introduce the stepped care model in detail and discuss its implementation and implications.
About the Speaker: Professor Lum’s research focuses on social policy and evidence based multicomponent intervention for social problems. He is particularly interested in the interface among aging, culture, and humanity. He enjoys very much identifying and exploring the Asian perspectives in these topics. Professor Lum works closely with community stakeholders to develop, implement, and test various clinical and policy interventions to enhance the well-being of older people. Apart from serving as the Head of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, he is the Deputy Convenor of the HKU Strategic Research Theme on Aging and Associate Director of the Sau Po Center on Aging. Since 2011, Professor Lum has received more than HK$79 million external research funding (US$10.1 million) as the principle investigator or co-principle investigator. His research findings on aging-in-place have led to the development of aging-in-place program for low income elders in public rental housing estates of the Hong Kong Housing Society. His research findings in long term care policy have led to the development of new assessment and service matching systems and reshaped the long term care infrastructure of Hong Kong. In 2001, Professor Lum was awarded the prestigious Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholar award. In 2011, he was elected as a Fellow by the Gerontological Society of America. In 2016, he was awarded the Career Leadership Award by the Association of Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW) in the United States.
This is a Weatherhead East Asian Institute 2019-2020 Lecture Series event.
Cosponsored by the China Center for Social Policy and the Columbia School of Social Work.
