Transforming for a healthier older population: GERI at the Singapore Health and Biomedical Congress 2023
19 October 2023
GERI researchers and faculty members were out in force to present their research and perspectives on building healthier lives for older adults at the 21st Singapore Health and Biomedical Congress (SHBC) 2023 on 12 and 13 October.
Research Fellows, Dr Grace Sum Chi-En and Dr Yu Chou Chuen, were recognised for their research excellence in the Scientific Competition.
Dr Sum clinched Gold in the Singapore Young Investigator Award (Health Services Research) category, for her poster titled "Healthcare utilisation and cost outcomes of the Geriatric Services Hub (GSH) for frail community-dwelling older adults: A retrospective propensity score-matched study in Singapore", capturing findings on GSH's impact on the use of healthcare services and healthcare costs.
These findings form part of a larger multi-institutional project, led by GERI and commissioned by the Ministry of Health, to comprehensively evaluate the GSH, a multi-site frailty intervention programme. The central features of the GSH include the conduct of Comprehensive Geriatric Assessments, and care co-ordination and management by a multidisciplinary team.
Commenting on her win, Dr Sum said, "I believe that the award is a reflection of the (GSH) team's excellent and hard work. Most importantly, I hope the work by GERI contributes to Singapore's wider efforts to improve healthcare practices and policies on the detection and management of frailty in older people in the community."
Dr Yu was awarded Merit in the Best Poster Award (Health Services Research) category, for his poster on "Understanding Moral Distress and Adaptive Responses of Healthcare Professionals in Advance Care Planning (ACP): Qualitative Findings from a Sequential Exploratory Mixed-methods Study".
The preliminary findings identified four difficulties that could lead to moral distress amongst healthcare professionals and frontline clinicians involved with ACP work, and outlined their coping strategies to manage the psychological reactions that they face.
Held at the Singapore Expo, the National Healthcare Group's annual flagship conference tackled the theme of "Transforming for a Healthier Population" with a focus on leveraging partnerships and technology to build healthier communities.
Associate Professor Ding Yew Yoong, Executive Director, GERI, was a panellist at the conference's opening symposium on "Built Environment and Health", where he joined the conversation alongside fellow experts to discuss how living environments can be optimised to achieve better health outcomes for Singapore's population and the challenge of devising system-implementable solutions.
Joint Faculty member, Associate Professor Ng Yee Sien, Senior Consultant, Rehabilitation Medicine, Sengkang General Hospital also presented his research on life space and community mobility of older adults at the follow-up track on the same theme.
The following researchers presented conference posters on an array of GERI projects, covering topics ranging from falls, ageism to polypharmacy:
Dr Tan Woan Shin, Joint Faculty Member and Dr Serene Nai, Research Fellow – "Cost-effectiveness of the Geriatric Services Hub: A novel frailty programme"
Dr Charlene Lau, Research Fellow – "Implementation of a geriatric inpatient mobility intervention: A qualitative study of nurses' perspectives"
Dr Yu Chou Chuen, Research Fellow – "Stigma and Fear during the COVID-19 pandemic: Perceptions of healthcare workers in Canada and Singapore"
Dr Mimaika Ginting, Research Associate – "The impact of a community-based falls prevention program on mobility among moderate- to high-risk fallers: a stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial"
June Teng, Research Associate – "Advancing the implementation of frailty identification and management in the community: Enablers and constraints of five different models of care"
Fiona Goh, Research Officer – "Polypharmacy outcomes of the Geriatric Services Hub: A single-arm pre-post study on community-dwelling frail older adults in Singapore"
Congratulations to our researchers and faculty for a successful conference!