• Faculty Highlight
• Expressions Spring 2026

Touching Lives with Life

Professor Phoebe Lam Honoured with Hong Kong Humanity Youth Power 2025 Award

Professor Phoebe Lam (right) has participated in the outreach service since 2012

When Clinical Assistant Professor Phoebe Pui Ying Lam stepped into a remote girls’ orphanage in Togo, she did not expect her work to be described as “hope for the unseen.” Yet it was there, in one of the most resource scarce corners of West Africa, that the spirit behind her latest accolade came into sharp focus.

Professor Lam, from the Faculty of Dentistry at The University of Hong Kong, has been named a recipient of the Hong Kong Humanity Youth Power 2025 award, established by the Hong Kong Red Cross to recognise young people under 35 who have shown sustained commitment to humanitarian work. In recognition of the outreach service she has provided since 2012 when she was still an undergraduate dental student, this honour celebrates not only her dedicated service, but also her vision of oral healthcare as a vehicle for dignity, empowerment, and long-term refinement and accomplishment.

In 2023 and 2024, Professor Lam led teams of HKU dental students to Togo in West Africa and Tanzania in East Africa—regions where dental resources are scarce and unmet oral health needs are immense. The two countries share a lack of daily toothbrushing habits among many children, but differ in their “sweetness profile”, as she observes.

Professor Lam has been named a recipient of the Hong Kong Humanity Youth Power 2025 award

“In some parts of Togo, families are so poor they may not even have money to buy sweets,” she explains. “Tooth decay there is less severe than that in Tanzania, where the economy has improved and people sometimes celebrate with sugary treats. But in both places, children are growing up without the good habit of brushing their teeth morning and night.”

Her teams provided essential oral healthcare and treatment—often simple extractions and relief of pain—but Professor Lam insists that proactive education is even more important. Students created their own teaching materials to demonstrate proper brushing techniques and explain basic oral healthcare. In Tanzania, they also addressed the widespread use of chewing sticks.

“Many people there clean their teeth with tree branches,” she says. “Over time, this can cause serious tooth wear. We didn’t just correct the brushing technique—also tried to enrich their oral healthcare knowledge. Where possible, we distributed toothbrushes donated by Hong Kong companies to children who had never owned one.”

The work in Togo’s remote girls’ orphanages left a deep mark on her humanitarian path. She recalls an orphanage director, moved to tears, so grateful to the team: “She told us, ‘We are the poorest of the poor. Even the rich families here may not get this kind of oral healthcare service, yet you chose to take a long way to take care of us.’ In that moment, I felt the spotlight that shines when lives are interwoven.”

Professor Lam’s humanitarian path is closely tied to her identity as a young educator. Now a Clinical Assistant Professor in Paediatric Dentistry, she once struggled as a student with the feeling that her manual skills lagged behind her research strengths. A CEDARS councillor’s encouragement—recognising her empathy for patients—helped her see that dentistry is far more than technical perfection.

Professor Lam leads her team to provide essential treatment to children in Africa

That insight now shapes how she teaches. She deliberately builds space into overseas trips for students to connect with local communities, listen to stories and question their own assumptions about health and inequality. Some have returned to Hong Kong and determined to pursue public health or dental policy, hoping to tackle systemic barriers rather than individual cases alone.

“If you want students to build a ship, motivate them to long for the endless sea,” she says. “If I want the students to commit to service, I can’t just tell them to be kind. I have to let them stand in places where suffering and resilience meet, so they can decide what kind of dentist — and what kind of person — they want to become.”

BDS students create their own teaching materials to demonstrate proper brushing techniques and explain basic oral health

For Professor Lam, the Humanity Award is less a personal milestone than a reflection of HKU Dentistry’s core values: a lifelong commitment to global oral health equity, hands-on humanitarian engagement and values-driven education.

“This award belongs to my past teachers, mentors, students, colleagues, and the communities that welcomed us,” she reflects. “Dentistry can relieve pain in a single appointment—but it can also plant seeds of hope that last far beyond the clinic. That is the kind of impact I hope we will continue to make through good teamwork.”

The outreach team provides dental checkups to the people in need

The outreach service team promotes basic oral health awareness, highlighting that education is even more important

Professor Lam leads teams of HKU dental students to provide outreach service