News

Debates on e-cigarettes often focus on the potential harms or benefits of vaping versus smoking. Dr Yvette van der Eijk, Senior Research Fellow, and Assistant Professor Lee Jeong Kyu are more concerned about the industry’s preying on youth. As e-cigarettes are newly developed products, it is hard to assess their harms and make fair conclusions about their long-term health impact. Based on the body of research, we can meanwhile assume that e-cigarettes containing nicotine are addictive, much like regular cigarettes, and that vaping is not safe, but safer than smoking. But toRead more

The government recently passed the bill for standardised packaging for all tobacco products sold in Singapore. From next year, all tobacco packs will be a drab brown colour, with all logos, colours and branding elements removed, and graphic health warnings covering 70 per cent of the pack surface. Packaging is an important marketing tool, especially in places like Singapore where tobacco advertising is heavily restricted. A tobacco industry executive, in internal industry communications, stated in 1994: “When you don’t have anything else – our packaging is our marketing.” The move toRead more

In response to the recent HIV registry data leak, Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, Programme Leader (Infectious Diseases), and Mr Rayner Tan, PhD student and researcher on HIV, address the dated views that many Singaporeans have of the disease. While there has been significant advances in medical science and treatment of HIV, the same cannot be said about the progress towards social acceptance and de-stigmatisation of the disease. Public perceptions and attitudes towards people living with HIV have not move beyond the narratives of fear and prejudice that marked the earlyRead more

Cutting down on white rice may not in itself lower one’s risk of getting diabetes. What matters more is what the rice is substituted with and the overall quality of a person’s diet. These were presented in two new studies that used data from the Singapore Chinese Health Study (SCHS) and were co-authored by Professor Rob van Dam, Vice Dean (Academic Affairs) and Epidemiology Domain Leader, and Professor Koh Woon Puay, SCHS Principal Investigator and director of the Centre for Clinician-Scientist Development at Duke-NUS Medical School. One study measured the link betweenRead more

What is the importance of health technology assessment (HTA) in health decision making? What are the processes and methods adopted by the various HTA entities in Singapore and the region? How has the role of HTA evolved in the context of universal health coverage (UHC)? These were some of the questions covered at the ‘Health Technology Assessment: Selecting the Highest Value Care’ Training and Symposium on 8-10 January, jointly organised by the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health and the Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP), Thailand. The eventRead more

Malnutrition is a problem often perceived to be linked to food shortages, but many people do not realise that it can also be caused by excessive consumption of empty calories, such as from sugar. Singapore has already adopted a range of measures when it comes to managing sugar consumption, including prohibiting the sale of beverages with excessive amounts of sugar in schools and public sector buildings, and introducing the Healthier Choice symbol to highlight products with lower levels of sugar. But the measures recently proposed by the Ministry of Health,Read more

Based on last year’s National Nutrition Survey by the Health Promotion Board, Singaporeans take an average of 60g of sugar a day, which is higher than the 50g limit recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). High-sugar food and drinks are getting cheaper and becoming more easily available, while portion sizes are getting bigger and people are eating more processed food. “One reason for the increased portion size of sugary beverages is probably that the incremental cost of producing larger-sized beverages is relatively low, while a larger beverage size givesRead more

Traditionally, workplace wellbeing focused on occupational safety and health, because concerns about it arose during a time where most jobs were blue-collar and many workplaces were full of hazards. However, workplaces have evolved and the greatest hazards for many are no longer hearing loss or accidents caused by machines, but the onset of chronic diseases such as diabetes or burnout-linked depression. The increasingly sedentary nature of work demands we place greater emphasis on health promotion. Dean, Professor Teo Yik Ying, shares about the national programme on Total Workplace Safety and Health (TotalRead more

Southeast Asians make up about 20 per cent of the 450 million people living with diabetes globally, with many of them living in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Experts have blamed this on a prevalence of processed and unhealthy food, a lack of early intervention for patients and misinformation — for a long time, diabetes was thought to be a disease that afflicted people in wealthier countries. But Singapore is leading the fight against diabetes in Southeast Asia, taking a proactive approach to prevention and early treatment. “There aren’t many countries doingRead more

In recent years, Singapore has ramped up its measures to drive down the smoking rate, including banning point-of-sale display, increasing excise taxes and prices, banning alternative tobacco products, and proposing standardised packaging for all tobacco products. Joining this slew of measures with effect from 1 January 2019 are the country’s first precinct-wide smoking ban along Orchard Road, and the raising of the minimum legal age to smoke from 18 to 19. Vice Dean (Research), Associate Professor Alex Cook, said there is clear evidence linking smoking bans to improved cardiovascular healthRead more

Today’s academic institutions are far from maximising their potential for catalysing social change, opined Assistant Professor Clarence Tam and Dr Vittoria Offeddu from SSHSPH, Assistant Professor Voo Teck Chuan, NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics, and Assistant Professor Neisha Sundaram, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In terms of social value, current assessments appear tokenistic and irrelevant. For example, asking academics how many policies will result from their research, or how much disease will be averted as a result of implementing new interventions, ignores the fact that many academics lack training in policymaking andRead more

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), disorders of the heart and blood vessels, are the leading global cause of death annually, and they are reaching epidemic levels in many Asian countries including Singapore, according to a study released by the Economist Intelligence Unit this month. CVDs contribute to approximately one in three deaths in Singapore, and they levy US$8.1 billion in direct and indirect costs on individuals, their households and the public finances. Modifiable risk factors such as smoking, hypertension, obesity and high cholesterol levels account for US$4.9 billion or 60 per cent ofRead more