On 15 September 2018, at the 50th Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health (APACPH) Conference in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, Ms Tan Sok Teng, Research Associate, was conferred the Young Investigator Traveller’s Award and Dr Andre Matthias Müller, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, received the Best Oral Presentation Award. Congratulations, Ms Tan and Dr Müller!
The Young Investigator Traveller’s Award is given to promising young researchers with high potential to bring impactful public health implications. Ms Tan has been passionately working with refugees for the past 10 years. After joining the School, she worked on exploring refugees’ health needs, health systems responses and challenges in addressing these needs in the Southeast Asian region. While acknowledging the challenges surrounding refugee work in the region, she also realises the way to overcome these barriers is to stimulate more discussions among academicians and politicians. At the 50th APACPH Conference, Ms Tan gave an oral presentation on refugees’ health needs in Southeast Asia and the challenges faced by countries in responding to these needs. This study is one of the very few refugee health-related research efforts in the region, and serves as a good reference for policy decisions and future research work.
Dr Müller’s presentation entitled “Correlates of accelerometer-measured sedentary behaviour in Singaporean adults” was selected from over 160 abstracts presented orally throughout the three-day conference. A member of the Physical Activity and Nutrition Determinants in Asia (PANDA) Programme research team, he is mainly interested in changing important health behaviours such as physical activity and sedentary behaviours at the population level through various consumer-based technologies. During his presentation at the conference, Dr Müller made the audience stand while he explained that reducing sedentary time is an underappreciated yet crucial public health target. His highly interactive presentation stirred up a lively discussion around the implications of too much sitting.
