Language, Health and Culture

Olga Zayts-Spence is Director of Research and Impact Initiative for Communication in Healthcare (HKU RIICH) at the University of Hong Kong (www.hkuriich.org). Her pionerring applied linguistic research on healthcare communication in Hong Kong and Greater China spans over 17 years and covers such diverse healthcare settings as genetic counselling and genetic/genomic medicine, mental health, end-of-life care and traditional Chinese medicine, among others. She has published widely on various topics related to language and communication in healthcare, including risk and uncertainty, shared decision-making, the impact of language and culture on healthcare communication, interprofessional health communication and the mental health of vulnerable demographic groups during COVID-19. She works closely with public and private healthcare institutions in Hong Kong. She is also a board member of Mind Hong Kong and an advisory panel member of City Mental Health Alliance, the organizations that promote mental health in Hong Kong. Susan M. Bridges is Director of the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL), Professor of Practice at the Academic Unit of Social Contexts and Policies of Education, and was previously Assistant Dean (Curriculum Innovation) with the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Hong Kong. Her work in higher education is inherently interprofessional and interdisciplinary. She draws on her background in applied linguistics to explore the ‘how’ of effective pedagogy and clinical communication through interactional and ethnographic approaches. Supported by the General Research Fund (GRF) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), her health literacy research in Hong Kong has established new lines of inquiry in oral health literacy and interpreter-mediated clinical dentistry.