Congratulations to Associate Professor Wong Mee Lian, who was conferred the College of Public Health and Occupational Physicians (CPHOP) Lifetime Achievement Award at the 14th Singapore Public Health and Occupational Medicine Conference on 15–16 October.
The CPHOP Lifetime Achievement Award honours exceptional public health and occupational medicine (PHOM) leaders and visionaries who have distinguished themselves through their accomplishments and contributions to the PHOM field in Singapore, and served as role models to the PHOM community.
A/Prof Wong has devoted more than 20 years of her career researching marginalised and vulnerable women in Singapore. She developed and evaluated programmes and behavioural interventions to raise awareness and reduce incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among sex workers.
One of her first projects involved a survey of over 800 brothel-based sex workers, where her team found that only a handful used condoms with clients all the time. A/Prof Wong managed to convince this small group of ‘experts’ to share their practical tips and best practices with other sex workers, to help one another work more safely. These efforts led to a sustained increase in condom use of more than 95 per cent and a corresponding marked decline in STIs. This work was also cited by the UNAIDS 2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic as an example of a comprehensive and successful HIV prevention intervention programme for sex workers.
A/Prof Wong’s public health work in the local landscape has resulted in improved lasting health status of these groups. It has contributed substantially to our understanding of sex workers and their clients, and measures that can be used to control the spread of STIs and HIV in these populations. Her STI/HIV prevention research has also expanded to other groups, such as heterosexual men, adolescents and married women in Singapore and Cambodia. In addition, she has published more than 150 papers on STI/HIV prevention and health promotion.
“She was passionate about this public health problem, and wanted to help the sex workers be able to protect themselves and reduce the spread of STIs in the community,” said Assistant Professor Clive Tan, who delivered the citation for A/Prof Wong.
He added, “She is able to see past the social stigma of the occupation, and break it down into its essentials: these sex workers — if they had a choice, they would earn their money in other ways. But they had tough life situations; they had to make difficult choices and personal sacrifices to earn money to raise their families. A/Prof Wong went in to help with the purest of intentions. There was no fame and glory in this.”
Guest of Honour, Mr Chan Heng Kee, Permanent Secretary of Health, presented the CPHOP Lifetime Achievement Award to A/Prof Wong at the award ceremony on 15 October.
Prior recipients of the CPHOP Lifetime Achievement Award include Emeritus Prof Lee Hin Peng (2011), Prof Goh Kee Tai (2013), Dr Chew Pin Kee (2014), Dr Chen Ai Ju (2015), Dr Lam Sian Lian (2016), Prof David Koh (2017) and Dr Shanta Emmanuel (2018).
Read Dr Tan’s full citation here.
Read our Let’s Talk Public Health interview with A/Prof Wong here.