Speech by Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State for Health, at opening ceremony of the conference on ageing and resilience in the 21st century, 11 October 2017

Professor Thomas Coffman

Dean, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School

Associate Professor Angelique Chan

Executive Director, Centre for Ageing Research and Education

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

            Good morning. I am delighted to join you today at the conference on Ageing and Resilience organised by the Centre for Ageing Research and Education (CARE) under the aegis of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities. To our overseas guests, a warm welcome to Singapore!

RESILIENCE AND AGEING WELL

2.     Like the rest of Asia, Singapore’s population is ageing rapidly. By 2030, one in four Singaporeans will be aged 65 years and above, about double that of today. This rapid population ageing is in part due to increasing longevity. Rather than face ageing with fear, the Ministerial Committee for Ageing has put in place a $3bn Action Plan for Successful Ageing, to help our seniors maximise their longevity, and lead more years of healthy, happy and meaningful life.

3.     Building resilience is central to ageing well. In my view, we need to build resilience at three levels. First, we need to help individual seniors strengthen their ability to cope with challenges that come with ageing, be it physical or emotional.  As we age, we inevitably encounter failure, loss, and illness. These could be the development of a chronic illness, the onset of disability, a transformation in one’s lifestyle due to retirement, the loss of a steady income, loneliness due to children growing up and moving away for education or employment, or inevitably, the passing away of a loved one or friends. It is how we respond to these life events that defines our ensuing quality of life.

4.     We seek to strengthen resilience by empowering our seniors to understand, pre-empt and cope with the physical changes that come with ageing, such as the onset of frailty. For instance, MOH and HPB has engaged over 30,000 mature workers in 7 sectors on a series of workplace health programmes to empower them on how to stay healthy and manage their chronic conditions. Similarly, exercises and nutrition programmes aimed at strengthening seniors to delay the onset of frailty have been implemented in many communities.

5.     Under the National Silver Academy, we have supported the Work Life Transition Programme which comprises a series of workshops aimed at helping mature workers and seniors to identify what is important to them, set goals and create action plans to achieve these goals, at different stages in their life. We hope to enable mature workers and seniors to engage in more pro-active planning and management of their work-life transition.

6.     Second, we need to strengthen resilience at the family level.Ageing does not only involve individuals, it involves families.  As our society grows older and family sizes shrink due to lower fertility and increasing singlehood, we need to think about ways to support family caregivers who are often also relatively old themselves.  Recent work at CARE shows that older caregivers (55+) are more likely to have at least one chronic disease, mobility limitations, and a higher number of depressive symptoms compared to younger caregivers. In addition, caregivers in their 80s and 90s were providing an average of about 50 hours of care per week. In order to better help our caregivers cope, especially older caregivers, we need to look into ways to bring care for our seniors closer to homes.

7.     Therefore, over the past five years, we have almost doubled the number of home and centre-based care places as well as enhanced caregiver support in the community such as the caregiver training grant for caregivers to attend relevant courses appropriate to the care needs of their loved ones and providing access to respite care services. We also started the “Eldercarer” training initiative aimed at developing a pool of foreign domestic helpers with eldercare training who can support families with seniors with more care needs.

8.     Third, we also need to work on strengthening resilience at the community and society’s level, in order to better meet the challenges of an ageing population. As families shrink, we need to strengthen community support for our seniors, to complement the role of families. Research at CARE has shown that having larger social networks is correlated with better perceived health and fewer depressive symptoms among older adults with the same number of chronic diseases. Larger social networks can help to buffer stressful situations and enable seniors to better reach out for physical help or emotional support.  Strong and effective support networks can also lead to optimism in individuals as well as provide a source of social activity which can improve health.  Indeed, the government has launched the Community Networks for Seniors (CNS) programme which seeks to strengthen partnerships among community stakeholders to better outreach and support our seniors in the community. We also promoted the formation of dementia friendly communities, to rally members of the public to help look out for and support our seniors.

ENABLING TRANSLATIONAL MULTI-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

9.     The concept of resilience is less well-known than ‘successful ageing” or “active ageing”, and one of the contributions that this forum will make over the next two days is to discuss the value of resilience as a concept, and how to define and better measure resilience. Presenters will also discuss what predicts resilience among seniors, and how we can promote and enhance it.

10.     This is an example of the translational research and innovation that we are increasingly investing in, to advise our national strategies on population ageing. The Duke-NUS Centre for Ageing Research and Education (CARE) was set up in 2015 to facilitate multidisciplinary research on ageing. CARE’s focus on the social aspects of ageing has provided us insights into ageing and resilience. For example, CARE’s research findings on the relationship between social networks and perceived health as well as depressive symptoms could then be translated into programmes that seek to enhance resilience through better social networks and personal mastery. 

11.     We are also tapping on translational multi-disciplinary research and innovation to help seniors age well. Set up in August 2015, the National Innovation Challenge (NIC) on Active and Confident Ageing has since set aside up to $200 million to find better ways of delaying the onset of disease and disability, facilitate research and innovation in work and learning, as well as to leverage research in science and technology to help seniors age in place and live independently despite physical frailty.

12.     To date, we have awarded close to $21 million across three grant calls seeking ideas in transforming ageless workplaces, improving the productivity of home care, reducing the risk of cognitive decline and better care for seniors with dementia in the community. For instance, TOUCH Community Services partnered Pulsesync under the Care-at-home Innovation Grant to make use of mobile technology to identify, connect and match volunteers based on their interests and availability to real-time needs of frail seniors. For a start, the research solution would support meals delivery and transport escort services. Moving forward, TOUCH Community Services aims to mobilise a wider pool of volunteers and open up further possibilities in helping needy seniors on-demand so that healthcare professionals could focus on clients with higher care needs.

13.     I am pleased to share that we have recently launched two grant calls aimed at strengthening physical resilience. The Healthy Ageing Innovation Grant was launched in May this year to look into ways to delay the onset or reduce the risk of physical frailty so that seniors can age in place independently and with grace. A Grant Call on Falls Prevention was launched last month to look into efforts in both primary and secondary prevention of falls. This is an area that is especially important as falls can result in serious injuries such as hip fractures, disabilities or even death. Through these grant calls, we hope to attract multi-disciplinary research proposals that are scaleable and sustainable and can be implemented on the ground to benefit our seniors.

CONCLUSION

14.     In closing, let me take this opportunity to thank CARE in organising this meaningful conference. We hope that the sharing could inspire more of you to collectively work towards solutions that could enhance resilience in individuals, communities, families and societies at large. I wish you a fruitful conference ahead.

Thank you.