Research Background
I believe that 1997 is an important year in the minds of many Hong Kong people, because Hong Kong officially returned to the motherland from the status of a British colony. But for a research team from the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong government's Department of Health, it also marks the creation of one of the largest birth cohorts in Asia.
The Department of Community Medicine of the University of Hong Kong (the predecessor of the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong) has been committed to tobacco control. In view of the serious smoking situation in China, the "Children of 1997" study was initially conceived to provide sufficient medical evidence on the impact of second-hand smoke on infant health, and was launched with funding from the Hong Kong Health Care and Promotion Fund.