Professor Terry Lum

Professor Terry Lum is the Henry G. Leong Professor in Social Work and Social Administration and the Professor of Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong (HKU).

His research focuses on long-term care, productive aging, and geriatric mental health. He is a key advisor to the Hong Kong Government in long-term care policy. During the last decade, he led the development of new assessment instruments and service matching formulas for long-term care for frail older adults in Hong Kong. He advised the Hong Kong Government to develop the Community Care Service Voucher Program that introduced personal budget to community care; to launch the new Living Allowance Program that provided cash allowance for low income caregivers of both frail older people and people with disabilities; and to revamp the assessment protocol of the Disability Allowance to financially support people with disabilities. He also led the development of the Aging-inPlace Program for low income older adults living in public rental housing estates in Hong Kong. He is currently directing several large-scale intervention research projects to prevent physical frailty and geriatric depression, and various policy research projects to enhance the long-term care infrastructure and age friendliness in Hong Kong. Professor Lum is a member of the WHO’s Consortium on Metrics and Evidence for Healthy Aging and Global Network of Long-term care. He was a member of the National Advisory Council of the Cash and Counseling Program, the first national consumer directed care program in the United States.  
 
Professor Lum had taught in the University of Minnesota in the United States before he joined HKU. He was elected as a Fellow by the Gerontological Society of America in 2011 and was awarded the Career Leadership Award by the Association of Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW) in 2016. Professor Lum is the Editor for Asia and Australasia of the Journal of Aging and Mental Health.