Of new healthcare screening services and partnerships
Published: 07 Oct 2019
More than 500 residents were screened at Kampong Glam Community Club on 6 and 7 September 2019, during the first leg of the annual Neighbourhood Health Service (NHS) 2019. NHS 2019 continued in Queenstown on 5 and 6 October 2019.
This year’s event is the biggest since its inception in 2007, with a total of 16 community partners coming together to bring an integrated and holistic screening experience right to the doorsteps of residents in both Kampong Glam and Queenstown.
For the first time, mammogram screening was introduced as one of the 32 healthcare screening services at NHS this year. In partnership with the Singapore Cancer Society, a mammogram bus was stationed at Leng Kee Community Club to provide residents with the convenience of having mammograms done on-site, saving them the hassle of receiving a referral at a later date.
NHS 2019 also marked the inaugural collaboration with students from the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) Physiotherapy course to not only conduct fall-risk screening for elderly residents, but also extend such screening services right to the doorsteps of residents with mobility issues.
Professor Chong Yap Seng, Dean of the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine said, “With more tertiary education partners for this year’s NHS screening efforts, students will gain an understanding of how the various healthcare disciplines complement each other in actual real-life scenarios to care for patients.”
The NHS is NUS Medicine’s annual student-led flagship community health project which brings together students from NTU Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and Duke-NUS Medical School – as well as social work, nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy students from NUS Social Work, NUS Nursing, Nanyang Polytechnic and SIT. This allows interdisciplinary teams to participate in door-to-door screening, fostering interprofessional collaboration.
Professor Kenneth Mak, Deputy Director Medical Services (Health Services Group) from the Ministry of Health (MOH) said, “NHS 2019 is a holistic, community-based health screening aligned with nationwide screening efforts.”
“Serving over almost 6,000 residents in seven different districts, NHS is the only student-led community health project with a strong partnering support from undergraduates from the Alice Lee School of Nursing at NUS and other medical schools in Singapore. This is an impressive undertaking and demonstrates the commitment level that our future healthcare professionals have towards improving the community’s health outcomes.” – Prof Kenneth Mak
As part of NHS’ holistic healthcare screening programme, residents are also provided with personalised follow-ups after the screening.
As of July 2019, about 38% of 132 residents previously identified for the NHS’ personalised followup programme in 2018 were subsequently discharged as they had followed up with their doctors for a sustained period of time and took their medicines regularly.
“This is a commendable achievement, considering that lower-income rental block residents are less likely than the average Singaporean to seek healthcare support due to their difficult socioeconomic circumstances,” said Prof Gerald Koh from NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, who has been advising NHS since 2007.
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