Grants for healthy lifestyle

Grants for healthy lifestyle

Photo above: Minister of State for Health and Manpower Amy Khor witnessed the signing of the MOU with NYP.

SINGAPORE - The Health Promotion Board (HPB) has launched a new grant to help fund projects which promote healthy lifestyles.

More than 4,500 of the board's health ambassadors will be able to tap on the grant of up to $500 a year for each approved project, to help bring their ideas to fruition.

The projects should bring home the message of a healthy lifestyle to people they know. For instance, they can hold health talks, healthier cooking demonstrations or health screening recruitment drives.

The grant will be awarded only to projects that run for a minimum of three months. Yesterday, 700 health ambassadors graduated at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP).

Minister of State for Health and Manpower Amy Khor was guest of honour at the ceremony.

The foundation course the health ambassadors take involves 12 hours of rigorous training in areas such as hypertension, nutrition, achieving a healthy weight through physical activity and effective communication skills.

The ambassadors are expected to disseminate HPB's health messages, help others to be health literate and provide effective peer support to introduce and sustain behaviour change.

They are also expected to promote the recruitment of more health ambassadors.

Those who serve as team leaders will get the opportunity to attend a fully-funded 21/2-day leadership course.

HPB will also provide selected ambassadors with a fully funded opportunity to do a specialist diploma in health promotion at Nanyang Polytechnic.

The part-time 300-hour course will be conducted in two semesters over a 12 month period.

HPB has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nanyang Polytechnic to jointly develop a General Studies Module in Health Promotion.

An accelerated module will allow up to 3,000 students in the health-related fields of nursing and life sciences to learn health promotion skills.

It will also encourage them to become health ambassadors as part of its polytechnic curriculum. The memorandum of understanding also ensures that Nanyang Polytechnic students will be provided with internship and project collaboration opportunities with HPB.

And after this, HPB aims to expand the health ambassador network through other schools and institutes of higher learning.


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