Healthy Living Master Plan

Objectives

The Healthy Living Master Plan advances the vision “Healthy Living Every Day: Making the Connections”, seeking to make healthy living accessible, convenient, attractive, natural and increasingly effortless for all Singaporeans by 2020.[1][2][3][4]It frames health holistically across physical, mental and social wellbeing, and aims to prevent and manage major non-communicable diseases, including heart disease and stroke, cancer, diabetes, mental disorders and chronic respiratory disease.[1][2]

• Embed healthier routines across homes, workplaces, schools and neighbourhoods by ensuring that health-promoting amenities, services and choices are available close to where people live, learn and work.[1][5][6]
• Organise action through the interconnected “Place, People and Price” framework: create supportive physical environments and seamless access to healthier options; foster socially inclusive communities through programmes, messaging, role models and advocates; and make healthier options affordable.[2][3]
• Promote regular physical activity, healthy eating, smoke-free lifestyles, recommended health screening and prompt treatment, while using supportive environments and healthier defaults to sustain beneficial habits.[2][5]
• Expand active ageing, sport, walking, cycling, green-space access and community interaction through integrated neighbourhood and urban development.[5][7]
• Build healthy workplace ecosystems, integrate physical and social environments in communities, and increase healthy-living awareness among young people.[8]
• Improve affordability and access to recommended screening, healthier food and healthier meals, with particular attention to lower-income groups and the costs of screening and nutritious food.[9][3][10]
• Achieve selected population-health targets, including 20% of meals eaten away from home being healthier by 2020, a sustained obesity rate of 10% or less by 2020, and a reduction in childhood caries among seven-year-olds from 50% to 40% by 2020.[10][4]

Implementation

Implementation relies on a whole-of-government and whole-of-society model in which public agencies, private organisations, healthcare providers, employers, schools, communities and citizens jointly create conditions that make healthy choices easier.[11][1][3]The Healthy Living Master Plan Taskforce, established in September 2012, coordinates nationwide health-promotion and disease-prevention planning, including stock-taking existing activities, learning from local and international practice, consulting stakeholders, and integrating planning, implementation, monitoring and review.[3][8]

• Coordinate delivery across the Health Promotion Board, Regional Health Systems, grassroots organisations, relevant government agencies, Town Councils, the Land Transport Authority, Ministry of National Development, Ministry of Education, National Parks Board, Sport Singapore and community partners.[3][6]
• Engage residents, students, workers, employers, retirees and community organisations through inclusive co-creation and consultation, including a six-week online and face-to-face consultation involving approximately 530 participants from varied age and income groups.[1][7]
• Deliver community health programmes through the People’s Association National Wellness Programme in 87 constituencies, covering active ageing, lifelong learning, health and fitness, community service and self-reliance.[5]
• Increase affordable participation in sport through ActiveSG and the Sports Facilities Master Plan, operating across national, regional, town and neighbourhood levels.[5]
• Improve active travel and local access through parks, fitness corners, sheltered walking routes, pedestrian infrastructure, off-road cycling paths and links to Park Connector Networks; the plan aims for 190 kilometres of off-road cycling paths by 2020 and an eventual cycling network in every Housing and Development Board town.[6][12]
• Develop and test community ecosystems through partnerships with Regional Health Systems and local organisations, including pilots in Sembawang and Choa Chu Kang, before fine-tuning and considering replication in other precincts.[6][12]
• Strengthen healthier defaults by expanding smoke-free areas, applying Active Design principles in buildings, and increasing healthier food availability in eateries, vending machines, schools, workplaces and parks.[12]
• Tailor workplace interventions through tripartite partnerships among government, unions and employers, particularly for mature workers and workers in dispersed or shift-based sectors such as retail, transport, cleaning and security.[8]
• Pool demand, facilities and resources in business parks and industrial estates to lower barriers for small and medium-sized enterprises, replicate the Mapletree Business City model in at least 15 sites over five years, and phase in Total Workplace Safety and Health over three to five years.[13]
• Use subsidies under the Integrated Screening Programme for eligible Community Health Assist Scheme cardholders, extend Medisave use to recommended neonatal screening, and provide incentives and rewards that encourage healthier food provision, nutrition, physical activity and weight management.[12][10]
• Extend preventive health promotion across education settings through oral care, smoking prevention, weight management, healthier school meals, non-sweetened drinks, water provision and health-promotion managers working with school communities.[4]
• Mobilise healthcare professionals, lay ambassadors, counsellors and health experts through structured coaching and the strengthened Health Ambassador Network.[10]

Progress is to be informed by programme targets, implementation milestones, monitoring and review, including cancer-screening coverage, healthier-meal uptake, obesity, smoking, childhood oral-health and cycling-infrastructure measures.[14][8][12][10][4]The supplied material does not specify a comprehensive indicator methodology, reporting schedule, independent evaluation process, formal accountability mechanism, programme budget or quantified funding allocation.[8][13][6][12][10][4]

Monitoring & Evaluation

The Master Plan incorporates planning, implementation, monitoring and review, using population-health evidence, behavioural surveillance, consultation feedback, programme milestones and outcome targets to guide action.[3]The source cites the Singapore Burden of Diseases Study 2010, the 2010 National Nutrition Survey and the Health Behavioural Surveillance Survey 2013 as evidence informing priorities.[2][14]Non-communicable diseases account for approximately 70% of Singapore’s burden of deaths and ill-health.[2]

• Monitor behavioural risk factors and preventive-care participation, including insufficient physical activity, obesity, adult smoking prevalence, and breast, cervical and colorectal cancer-screening coverage.[14]Reported screening coverage is 38% for breast cancer, 53% for cervical cancer and 34% for colorectal cancer.[14]
• Measure progress towards healthier food consumption, with a target for 20% of meals eaten away from home, equivalent to 500,000 daily meals, to be healthier by 2020.[10]
• Track childhood oral-health delivery, including rollout to 100 childcare centres in the first year and coverage of all childcare-centre children within three years, alongside a target to reduce caries among seven-year-olds from 50% to 40% by 2020.[4]
• Monitor population outcomes against a sustained obesity prevalence of 10% or less by 2020, and efforts to reduce smoking prevalence through preventing uptake and increasing cessation.[4]
• Assess community pilots in Sembawang and Choa Chu Kang, fine-tune their integrated health ecosystems, and consider replicating successful models in other precincts.[12]
• Track delivery milestones for the location-based physical-activity service, including its April 2014 first-phase launch and expected October 2014 second phase, as well as cycling-network expansion through 2015 and 190 kilometres of off-road cycling paths by 2020.[6][12]
• Use public consultation to gather aspirations, expectations, barriers and proposals from residents, workers, students, employers and other stakeholders.[7]Approximately 530 people participated in a six-week consultation conducted online and face to face in communities and workplaces.[7]

The Master Plan identifies monitoring and review as framework components and provides selected outcome targets, service-coverage measures and infrastructure milestones.[3][10][4]However, the supplied material does not specify a comprehensive indicator set, indicator definitions or methodologies, routine reporting schedule, surveillance protocol, evaluation design, independent review process, or formal accountability mechanism for the full range of initiatives.[5][8][13][6][12]

Costing & Financing

Financing content focuses chiefly on affordability, demand-side support and more efficient delivery rather than quantified fiscal commitments.[9][3]Healthy living is intended to be affordable, particularly for lower-income groups facing costs associated with healthier food and health screening.[9][3]

• Provide subsidies for recommended screening tests and general-practitioner consultations under the Health Promotion Board’s Integrated Screening Programme for eligible Community Health Assist Scheme cardholders from 1 January 2014.[12][10]
• Extend Medisave use to recommended neonatal screening tests for newborns from 1 January 2014.[12][10]
• Use financial micro-incentives, rewards and business incentives to encourage the supply of and demand for healthier food, physical activity, weight-management and other healthy-living options.[3][10]
• Provide accessible, free-to-use community amenities, including parks and fitness corners, as part of efforts to reduce access barriers to physical activity.[6]
• Pool demand and resources in workplace ecosystems to address limited planning capability, low staff demand and inadequate budgets, reduce implementation costs, and lower participation barriers for small and medium-sized enterprises.[13]
• Develop affordable sports access through ActiveSG programming and membership benefits in neighbourhoods.[5]

The source does not provide programme budgets, expenditure totals, unit costs, subsidy amounts, funding allocations, financing sources, resource-mobilisation targets, quantified funding gaps, or economic assumptions.[5][9][8][13][6][12]