MEDIA RELEASE
Singapore, 17 July 2024 – Beyond running community health posts in active ageing centres (AACs) to make healthcare services easily accessible for seniors living in Singapore’s southeast region, Singapore General Hospital (SGH) has further expanded and deepened its efforts in the community through the Healthy, Empowered and Active Living (HEAL) programme.
SGH dietitians have conducted in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with seniors at Montfort Care’s AAC in Bukit Purmei and Goodlife Makan in Marine Terrace to develop tailored nutrition awareness programmes. Seniors will learn about nutrition through interactive hands-on sessions and easy to understand nutrition snippets placed around their dining area at both Centres. This will enhance their overall communal dining experience and at the same time, empower them to manage their health and medical conditions through making the right food choices. This is but one of many HEAL initiatives that the Hospital has rolled out to better partner AACs under the National Age Well SG initiative.
The programme, made possible by the Low Tuck Kwong Foundation, started in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. SGH introduced several initiatives during the pandemic after noticing that many seniors were experiencing social isolation and loneliness from restrictions imposed by circuit breakers such as limiting home visits to those assessed by the hospital as necessary. They also lacked the means to communicate with their friends and loved ones via video calls or face to face interactions at AACs.
“Many seniors, particularly those living alone and of lower socio-economic status, struggled with their daily lives when COVID-19 hit. Some of them still do today. Having seen the impact of SGH’s work in the community, we are happy to support their efforts in building a senior-centred ecosystem that could perhaps pave the way for similar initiatives across Singapore in future,” said Ms Elaine Low, Chairperson of the Low Tuck Kwong Foundation.
The HEAL programme enables SGH’s Division of Population Health & Integrated Care to roll out innovative and sustainable care models under four pillars - Intergenerational Network and Community, Technology-enabled Care, Transformative Models of Community Care, and Community Ageing in Place - by taking a ground up yet academically rigorous approach to answer key questions: “What works, for Whom and Why”.
The Hospital is looking to support the expansion and extension of community development and transformation programmes that encourage strategies such as intergenerational engagement, youth volunteerism, digital health literacy and remote clinical monitoring, all critical for seniors to age in place and in their familiar neighbourhoods.
SGH is also implementing CAPE (Community Ageing-in-Place Ecosystem) in Marine Parade and has conducted a photovoice study in 2022 with 25 seniors in Marine Parade on facilitators and barriers of the built environment. The Hospital is now partnering social service agencies to strengthen health-social integrated care programmes and Singapore University of Technology and Design for placemaking to adapt the physical built environment that encourages social and health activities to improve seniors’ health and wellbeing.
A baseline survey of 567 seniors’ physical and social needs in selected estates in Marine Parade, Bukit Merah, Telok Blangah, Chinatown and Bedok South was also completed recently and will be expanded into a 3-year longitudinal study involving more seniors later this year.
“We are deeply grateful to have the support of Low Tuck Kwong Foundation and our community partners in helping us uplift the community we serve. The HEAL programme has seeded and sustained novel and impactful transformation initiatives to address community health gaps right where we see and face them. Evidence generated through a rigorous academic approach and person-centred approach such as involving our seniors to co-design the programme will ensure we make a true and lasting difference to empower health and active living for our seniors,” said Associate Professor Low Lian Leng, Chairman, Division of Population Health and Integrated Care, SGH, and Director, Southeast, SingHealth Office of Regional Health.
For media enquiries, please contact:
Carol Ang (Ms)
Communications Department
About Division of Population Health and Integrated Care
SGH has been providing home care and community nursing services since 2009 and 2018 respectively. Today, the Division of Population Health and Integrated Care (PHIC) (formerly known as Population Health and Integrated Care Office) cares for more than 300,000 residents in the southeast region of Singapore covering Telok Blangah, Tiong Bahru, Bukit Merah, Chinatown, Rochor, Kallang, Kampong Glam and Katong. We have also established nearly 40 community health posts in neighbourhoods of need. It is part of a larger 1.51 million population that SingHealth serves, which will also benefit from the initiatives that the Division of PHIC introduces.
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