Outstanding Performance in Research – Research Excellence Award Dr WONG Wing Sze Associate Professor of the Department of Psychological Studies Director of the Centre for Psychosocial Health and Aging

Dr Wong’s research interests lie in the broad areas of adjustment and outcomes of chronic museuloskeletal pain. She is also interested in the psychosocial factors associated with co-morbid chronic somatic symptoms, and health-related risk perception and decision making.  Her recent projects supported by grants from the General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council and the Health and Health Services Research Fund of the Food and Health Bureau examined the behavioural and cognitive processes underlying the development and maintenance of chronic pain and pain associated disability, addressed the psychosocial assessment of pain and cross-cultural comparison on pain behaviour and cognition. They led to 20 publications in high impact journals over the last three years.

Dr Wong is a leading health psychologist and a pioneer in the study of the psychosocial adjustment and outcomes of chronic museuloskeletal pain in the Chinese community. Within a very short time span of five years, she has established herself as the leading authority on the psychology of pain among the Chinese people. Due to her outstanding research contributions in the field, Dr Wong was elected Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science, strong testimony to her status in the international research community.

As one of the Directors of the Centre for Psychosocial Health and Aging, Dr Wong pulls together a critical and multidisciplinary mass within the HKIEd to facilitate collaboration and raise the current level of research based primarily on the isolated efforts of individual researchers.  She also provides the necessary expertise and infrastructure for the sustainable investigation of such research and its translation into improving the health of older adults at the individual, family and community levels.