International knowledge exchange (KE) activities
These international knowledge exchange activities (e.g., seminars or workshops) are supported—financially and/or through coordination and facilitation—by the Yushan Young Fellow Research Fund of the Ministry of Education, Taiwan (MOE-113-YSFSL-0003-002-P1, PI: Yu-Chih Chen, PhD), with the goals of fostering international exchange and strengthening research collaboration between Taiwan and the global academic community.
Topic: How to successfully publish in top aging journals
Speaker: Michelle Putnam, PhD, FGSA, Professor
Editor-in-Chief, Innovation in Aging (IA)
Director of the Gerontology Institute
Gerontology Department, UMass Boston, USA
This seminar featured Professor Michelle Putnam, an internationally renowned scholar and Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America (FGSA) at the Department of Social Work at National Taiwan University (NTUSW), who shared practical insights and strategies for publishing in leading aging journals. The talk also addressed the evolving publication workflow, including the responsible use of AI in writing and peer review process.
The event brought together 45 participants (11 on-site and 34 online), including 21 social work and social welfare scholars from institutions across Taiwan—such as NTUSW, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, National Taipei University, Chung Shan Medical University, Institute of Health Management and Policy at NTU, National Chung Cheng University, Kaohsiung Medical University, Taipei Medical University, National Chengchi University, Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science, Hungkuang University, Tamkang University, and Academia Sinica—as well as representatives from the Taiwan Association of Gerontology (TAG), and 24 PhD students. Beyond offering actionable guidance for Taiwanese scholars, the seminar helped identify shared research interests and laid the groundwork for future collaborations among IA, TAG, and NTUSW.
Topic: Policy insights for community dementia care: the Hong Kong and UK experience
Speaker: Gloria Wong, PhD, Associate Professor
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences
University of Reading, UK
This seminar hosted Professor Gloria Wong, an internationally recognized scholar in dementia care. Drawing on her extensive research, she highlighted a bottom-up approach to evidence generation—incorporating perspectives from key stakeholders in dementia care, including people living with dementia, family caregivers, helping professionals, healthcare providers, and government agencies—to inform best practices and improve care systems.
The event attracted 37 participants, including practitioners, helping professionals, and students. The talk offered a holistic overview of dementia care practice and policy in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, providing comparative and actionable insights to inform dementia care development in Taiwan.
Topic: Leveraging real-world data to address the complexity of aging and health
Speaker: Hao Luo, PhD, Assistant Professor
School of Public Health Sciences
University of Waterloo, Canada
This seminar hosted Professor Hao Luo, a Canadian interRAI fellow and an established statistician whose work applies computational epidemiology to health data to inform best practices in later-life health promotion. Her talk demonstrated how shared profiles of complex chronic conditions can be identified across societies and how these profiles can guide tailored services and policy-relevant solutions within a specific context.
The event attracted 24 participants, including students and healthcare professionals. The seminar highlighted practical strategies for leveraging real-world data to generate evidence on complex health conditions—particularly relevant for Taiwan, given its rapid population aging and the availability of rich administrative and healthcare datasets with reliable population-level health records—and outlined opportunities to develop analytic protocols that support future international comparisons.
Topic: Applications for structural equation modeling in the social sciences
Speaker: Hao Luo, PhD, Assistant Professor
School of Public Health Sciences
University of Waterloo, Canada
This workshop was hosted by the Taiwan Association of Social Work Education (TASWE). I facilitated the connection between Professor Hao Luo and TASWE, and served as the workshop moderator and co-chair, together with Professor Chiung-tao Shen, Director of TASWE. Professor Luo delivered a detailed introduction to structural equation modeling (SEM), with particular emphasis on confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and guided participants through a hands-on example using R.
Offered in both in-person and virtual formats, the workshop attracted 31 participants, including PhD students and social work professionals. Drawing on her experience as a statistical editor for academic journals, Professor Luo provided practical, high-impact guidance on rigorous SEM applications in social work research—highlighting theoretical considerations before model building, sample size and statistical power, and common modeling pitfalls. Overall, the workshop offered timely, applied SEM training for Taiwan’s social work research community.