More Support For Health Ambassadors To Bolster Their Health Promotion Efforts

Singapore, 8 December 2012: Health promotion efforts have been strengthened with the addition of 700 new Health Ambassadors who graduated today at the annual Health Ambassador’s graduation ceremony at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP).

2. The Health Ambassadors play an important role in the community to create a healthy living social movement. This is achieved by disseminating HPB’s health messages to the community, empowering the community to be health literate, providing effective peer support to introduce and sustain behaviour change in individuals as well as catalyse the recruitment of more Health Ambassadors in the community. The latest batch of Health Ambassadors graduated after completing a 12-hour rigorous foundation training curriculum which comprised learning about hypertension, how to achieve a healthy weight through physical activity and nutrition as well as effective communication skills.

Increased Support

3. The Health Promotion Board will be increasing support in three key areas to help Health Ambassadors achieve their ideas to bolster health promotion efforts. HPB has today announced a new grant to help Health Ambassadors initiate and sustain health promotion initiatives that can help to improve the health of the Singapore residents. Each health promotion project by Health Ambassadors must have a minimum duration 2 of three months to be funded a maximum of $500 per year. In order to qualify for the grant, each project team should have at least two Health Ambassadors. The Health Ambassadors in each project team must have completed the Health Ambassador foundation training and passed the final assessment as well as have been deployed for at least one HPB event.

4. Health Ambassadors who serve as team leaders will now get the opportunity to attend a fully funded leadership course to help them in their journey in achieving their health promotion projects. Starting from January 2013, team leaders will attend a two and a half day leadership training course which will provide insights in group facilitation, decision making, planning a programme for a community, project management and team work. The training session conducted by HPB’s Health Promotion Academy, aims to equip the team leaders with the necessary skills to serve in their respective committees and workgroups.

5. To be identified as a Health Ambassador Team Leader, a Health Ambassador should have contributed significantly to the health promotion effort and growth of the Health Ambassador Network, and demonstrated leadership ability. It is projected that with the growth of the Health Ambassador Network, about 300 Health Ambassadors will step up to be new team leaders every year. To meet this demand, the Health Promotion Academy will organise six runs of the Leadership Programme per year.

6. HPB will also provide selected Health Ambassadors, who are very passionate and keen on a career in health promotion, with a fully funded opportunity to do a Specialist Diploma in Health Promotion with NYP. Active participation, commitment and interest in the Health Ambassador Network are key factors which will determine their selection. The part-time 300 hour course will be conducted in two semesters over a 12 month period. Upon graduation, the Health Ambassadors will be tasked to spearhead future volunteer-initiated projects.

MOU to Strengthen Health Promotion Efforts 

7. HPB today also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NYP. As part of the MOU, HPB and NYP will co-develop the General Studies Module in Health Promotion, accessible by all 15, 000 NYP students. An accelerated module will allow up to 3000 students in health related the field of nursing and life sciences, to learn health promotion skills and encourage them to become Health Ambassadors as part of their polytechnic curriculum. HPB aims to expand the Health Ambassador network through schools and Institutes of Higher Learning, starting with NYP. Besides this, the MOU also ensures that NYP students will be provided with internship and project collaboration opportunities with HPB. In addition, the collaboration for the Specialist Diploma in Health Promotion will be extended till the end of NYP’s academic year 2015/2016.

Corporate Health Ambassadors

8. Dr Amy Khor, Minister of State for Health and Manpower, said, “This Corporate Health Ambassadors program multiplies the impact of the Health Ambassadors network in two ways. Firstly, it encourages the employees of the participating organisations to adopt healthier habits. Secondly, these organisations can fulfil their corporate social responsibility via the health ambassador outreach and help the people they work with adopt a healthier lifestyle. I am thrilled by the fact that an existing corporate partner, Merck Sharpe & Dohme (MSD), and a new addition, the Singapore Police Force (SPF), share HPB’s vision of inspiring Singaporeans, particularly working Singaporeans, to adopt a healthy lifestyle.”

9. HPB’s Corporate Health Ambassador Programme was formed to recruit, train and deploy community volunteers passionate about promoting a healthy lifestyle to their families, friends as well as their entire communities. The involvement of organisations is an important milestone for the Health Ambassador Network, as it allows HPB to leverage a concentration of expertise and skills found within these organisations.

10. Mr Ang Hak Seng, Chief Executive Officer, HPB, said, “We will aggressively expand the Health Ambassador network in four main areas. For a start, we are moving 4 upstream to educational institutions to set up CCA clubs in secondary schools, ITEs and the Polytechnics. With regard to Corporate Health Ambassadors, we will pursue employers whose corporate social responsibility is in line with HPB’s mission. We will also be working closely at the grassroots level to expand our Health Ambassador recruitment efforts. Finally, we will collaborate with allied health professionals such as those from the Singapore Physiotherapy Association so that we can achieve a win-win for their community outreach programmes as well. With these four streams, we hope to achieve one activist in every household and a blue sky vision of 100,000 by 2020.”

11. “Nanyang Polytechnic is pleased to collaborate with the Health Promotion Board to expand our current range of health promotion initiatives to include the Health Ambassador programme. We understand the important role Health Ambassadors play and we are committed to supporting the Health Ambassador Network through the participation of our staff and students. We hope that we will not only lead healthy lifestyles as individuals but will also help and encourage others to do so,” said Mr Chan Lee Mun, Principal & CEO, Nanyang Polytechnic.

Issued by Health Promotion Board

Annex 1 Health Ambassador Network (HAN)
Annex 2 Health Ambassador Grant
Annex 3 Health Ambassador Leadership Programme
Annex 4 Memorandum of Understanding between Health Promotion Board and Nanyang Polytechnic