REGULAR Lunch Meeting @ Holiday Inn B3 w/ Speaker

Your health at 90: The Hidden Influencers

Neo-libertarians will tell you that the responsibility for your health is yours and yours alone.

You can choose whether or not to smoke, drink alcohol, eat ultra-processed food, take exercise or not.

But Dr. Mackay will argue that responsibility also lies with governments to set the template for healthier behaviour to be able to happen, utilising public health laws, tax, education.

She also examines the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of products themselves, and also the commercial and political practices of businesses in Hong Kong, showing how these have a pervasive and often hidden impact on our personal health.

PROFESSOR DR JUDITH LONGSTAFF MACKAY, SBS, OBE, JP,

MBChB (Edin), FRCP (Edin), FRCP (Lon)

Dr Judith Mackay is a medical graduate from Edinburgh University, Scotland. She has lived in Hong Kong since 1967, initially working as a hospital physician, then since 1984 concentrating on public health, especially tobacco control.

She is Senior Advisor, Vital Strategies/Bloomberg Philanthropies; Senior Policy Advisor to World Health Organisation; and Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control.

Her particular interest is tobacco control in low-income countries; and tobacco and women, and challenging Big Tobacco, especially in Asia and the Middle East.

She has published over 240 academic papers and addressed over 500 conferences world‑wide. She has authored or co-authored 12 health atlases on topics ranging from teeth to sex.

HONOURS AND AWARDS   She has received the WHO Commemorative Medal, the Hong Kong Silver Bauhinia Star; the United Kingdom MBE, then OBE; the US Surgeon General's Medallion; Thailand late King's Royal Award; and awards from China. In 2006, she was selected by Time Magazine as one of 60 Asian Heroes from the previous 60 years; in 2007 selected as one of the Time 100 World’s Most Influential People.

She is married to a fellow doctor, Dr John Mackay, and has two sons. She has practiced taichi for 13 years, and plays golf to a handicap not commensurate with her years of playing. 

Her most favourite accolade is that she has been called one of the three most dangerous people in the world by the tobacco industry.