YSN Dean’s Lecture with Professor Sophia Chan
By: Yosra Raziani, PhD Student, Yale School of Nursing
“Primary health care is not an optional add on to the health system. It is the foundation that decides whether a system is sustainable or destined to collapse under its own hospital burden, and nurses must be leaders, not observers, in building that foundation.”
– Professor Chan
On January 20, 2026, Yale School of Nursing hosted its Dean’s Lecture with Professor Siu Chee Sophia Chan, recognized by Dean Azita Emami as a pioneering nurse leader, former Hong Kong health minister, and influential figure in health system reform. Professor Chan’s visit was organized by YSN’s Office of Planetary Health and Global Engagement and included meetings at Central and West Campus with Yale faculty, students, and senior leaders.
Professor Chan was the first nurse to reach the highest levels of government leadership and serves as a role model for how nursing can shape national policy. She outlined her career path from nursing to academia, government leadership, and back to the university, explaining how her research in tobacco control led her into health policy. She highlighted her decade of service in the Hong Kong government, including leading health system reforms and managing the COVID-19 pandemic, before returning to academia to integrate research, education, and policy in support of long-term primary health care transformation.
Professor Chan emphasized that sustainable health systems depend on strong, community-based primary health care. Citing the World Health Organization, she explained that primary care can meet up to 90 percent of health needs and is the most equitable and cost-effective path to universal health coverage. This vision, rooted in the Alma Ata Declaration, prioritizes prevention, early intervention, and community empowerment. She noted that recent international reports increasingly recognize nurses as key leaders in health system transformation, extending their roles beyond clinical care into policy, governance, and health equity.
Applying this framework in Hong Kong, Professor Chan described a health system dominated by public hospitals that consume the majority of government spending, while primary care remains fragmented and underfunded. She argued that meaningful reform requires shifting toward prevention, early detection, and community-based management of chronic disease. In 2017, the Hong Kong government launched a major primary health care reform focused on establishing a steering structure, building District Health Centers across all eighteen districts, and developing a long-term policy blueprint.
These District Health Centers serve as service, resource, and coordination hubs. Operated by NGOs with government funding, they rely on nurses and allied health professionals as the core workforce, with physicians connected through networks to support interdisciplinary care. Professor Chan also presented the Primary Health Care Blueprint, built on five pillars: a structured community-based system, strengthened governance through a Primary Healthcare Commission, strategic use of resources, workforce development for preventive and interdisciplinary care, and improved data connectivity to ensure continuity of care and population health monitoring.
Digital integration, she stressed, is essential to reform. Shared data systems allow primary care providers to coordinate services across hospitals, community organizations, government clinics, and private practitioners. She underscored nursing leadership as central to this transformation, highlighting nurses’ holistic approach, public trust, and expertise in prevention and care coordination. Professor Chan described leadership roles for nurses in advanced practice, directing District Health Centers, implementing digital health systems, and strengthening hospital-to-community transitions.
She concluded by introducing the HKU Primary Healthcare Academy as a hub for research, education, policy advocacy, and international collaboration to advance primary health care reform globally.
As of January 20, 2026, Professor Chan is an affiliated professor at Yale School of Nursing and will participate in upcoming programming organized by the Office of Planetary Health and Global Engagement, including a primarily virtual certificate program on planetary health leadership.