In 2016, meetings of groups of physicians and paediatricians with a special interest in lipid disorders and familial hypercholesterolaemia were held to discuss several domains of management of familial hypercholesterolaemia in adults and children in Hong Kong. After reviewing the evidence and guidelines for the diagnosis, screening, and management of familial hypercholesterolaemia, consensus was reached on the following aspects: clinical features, diagnostic criteria, screening in adults, screening in children, management in relation to target plasma low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, detection of atherosclerosis, lifestyle and behaviour modification, and pharmacotherapy.

A district based needs assessment was conducted over the past year to understand the health problems and the health education needs of the students in Tai Po district, Hong Kong. 6,879 primary one to primary six students from eighteen primary schools, participating in a district based Health Promoting Schools Project in Hong Kong, were invited to complete a selfadministrated questionnaire which was partly adapted from the Centre for Diseases and Control (CDC)'s Youth Risk Behaviour Surveillance Survey. The results presented a holistic picture of the health and needs of primary students with respect to their general health status, mental health, body weight and dietary behaviour, exercise, preventive health care, tobacco use, alcohol and other drug use, school environment and school health education. It provides baseline information for the project to prioritize the problems and strategically plan health promotion programmes with reference to the concept of Health Promoting Schools by the World Health Organization.

The occurrence of SARS in March 2003 has resulted in an increased interest, worldwide in emerging infectious diseases. The SARS experience provided us a lesson on the importance of promoting hygienic practices among individuals and different working sectors. In Hong Kong, a voluntary organization called the UNITE proposed a Hygiene Charter which aimed at taking hygiene to new levels. This action has been supported by individuals and different sectors including the Personal and Family, Management, Buildings, Catering, Education, Finance and Commercial, Industrial, Medical and Health, Public Transportation,. Social Welfare, Sports and Culture and Tourism. As promotion and maintenance of environmental health requires input from different sectors, the signing of the Hygiene Charter providesan opportunityfor individuals and the public to show their pledge and commitment to good hygiene practices. As a result, with environmentimprovement and good infectious disease control measures, prevention of epidemics of infectious diseases is deemed to be possible.Asia-PacJ PublicHealth 2004; 16(Supp): S12-S16.

Objective: To develop and validate HealthTracker -an electronic decision support (EDS) tool to assist primary care practitioners in guideline implementation for cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk management.Methods: HealthTracker is based on an algorithm which synthesises screening and management recommendations from 10 national guidelines related to CVD risk management. It is fully integrated with the two most popular Australian primary care software systems, Medical Director TM and Best Practice TM via the Pen Computer Systems PrimaryCareSideBar TM . There are four features to HealthTracker: (1) automatic pre-population of essential risk factor and treatment information from the primary care record; (2) provision of a CVD risk assessment and tailored management plan at the point of care; (3) an interactive risk communication interface for discussion with patients about current and projected risk; (4) a data extraction facility which allows practitioners to assess performance, view disease registers and implement recall systems.Results: HealthTracker has undergone an extensive validation and testing process. A database of 9076 routinely attending primary care patients was used to assess statistical correlation/agreement between the outputs generated from the algorithm within the PrimaryCareSideBar TM and those obtained from an independently programmed version in STATA 11. Near perfect correlation/agreement between the two programs was achieved for all 71 calculated variables. User acceptability testing was then conducted with 20 General Practitioners who trialled the software, checked for guideline consistency and provided recommendations to refine the system.Conclusion: A fully integrated, self-populating EDS tool is now practice-ready for large scale implementation and evaluation in Australian primary healthcare.

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