Abstract
Singapore is a densely populated urban island city state facing a rapidly ageing population and a rising prevalence of chronic disease. These challenges coupled with a complex healthcare landscape often results in poor healthcare encounters. Lifestyle interventions involving sustainable behavioural change is crucial in the holistic management of health, but these social determinants of health are often not adequately addressed during care encounters. This serve as an impetus to start shifting care beyond the hospital and into the community. However, shifting care into the community is a big step, requiring first an empathetic understanding of the community values. We used a mixed method research to inform the design of a self- management care ecosystem where residents of the community can be supported to exhibit health-promoting behaviours confidently through their daily social activities. The insights were shared through an exhibition to reach out to the healthcare professionals to reframe the way they think about delivering care to the ageing population of 200,000 residents in the northern segment of Singapore.
Keywords
social capital; successful ageing; community-based perspective
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.545
Citation
Tan, L., Wong, S., Loh, Z., and Lee, W. (2018) Healthy Self-Management Communities by Design, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.545
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Healthy Self-Management Communities by Design
Singapore is a densely populated urban island city state facing a rapidly ageing population and a rising prevalence of chronic disease. These challenges coupled with a complex healthcare landscape often results in poor healthcare encounters. Lifestyle interventions involving sustainable behavioural change is crucial in the holistic management of health, but these social determinants of health are often not adequately addressed during care encounters. This serve as an impetus to start shifting care beyond the hospital and into the community. However, shifting care into the community is a big step, requiring first an empathetic understanding of the community values. We used a mixed method research to inform the design of a self- management care ecosystem where residents of the community can be supported to exhibit health-promoting behaviours confidently through their daily social activities. The insights were shared through an exhibition to reach out to the healthcare professionals to reframe the way they think about delivering care to the ageing population of 200,000 residents in the northern segment of Singapore.