Date: December 12, 2007 (Wednesday)
Time: 12:30 – 14:00 (sandwich lunch from 12:30 –12:45; seminar begins at 12:45)
Venue: Seminar Room 6, LG-1/F, Laboratory Block, Faculty of Medicine Building, 21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

Abstract:
Interventions to prevent disease or to promote health must address causal factors. Our conventional approaches to identifying causal factors in public health derive from the risk factor paradigm, but this is proving less serviceable when the intervention is concerned with promoting health, and when the intervention concerns modifying general social circumstances. This seminar will review limitations to the risk factor approach, and will summarize alternative ways to think about the etiology of population health. It will also review the distinctions among cause, explanation and understanding and will propose criteria for identifying an adequate explanation.

Bio-sketch:
Ian McDowell has been teaching at the University of Ottawa since 1978. He has developed graduate courses in research methods, health measurement, in social epidemiology and in population health paradigms. He currently coordinates the "Individual and Population Health" component of the medical curriculum. He was the principal investigator of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging, a 10-year cohort study of 10,000 elderly Canadians to study the epidemiology of Alzheimer's disease and other cognitive disorders. To date the study has generated over 230 scientific publications. He is also the author of "Measuring Health: a Guide to Rating Scales and Questionnaires", now in its third edition from Oxford University Press.

Registration:
For registration and enquiries, please call Ms Maggie Cheuk at 2819-2841 or email mhrn@hkusua.hku.hk