The Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health will open on October 1. It is an expansion of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health.
The school is supported by an initial gift of S$30 million by NUS alumnus and demographer Saw Swee Hock. It will be part of a new building, to be ready by 2014.
Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said the school aims to improve the health of the population here and in the region through research on public health models that are cost-effective and relevant to Asia.
In line with this, the school will survey some 50,000 Singaporeans in the next five years to study their lifestyles. It hopes to gain a deeper understanding on Singaporeans' perceptions, knowledge, and preferences on health issues.
The survey is part of a new system called the Population Health Metrics and Analytics (PHMA).
The PHMA is said to be a cutting edge health information system that will monitor and integrate a massive volume of data. This is to help researchers better understand health issues and diseases and provide guidance to policymakers.
The data collected will provide a scientific base to influence policy-making and programmes. The data from respondents will be collected from questionnaires, interviews, health checks and laboratory tests.
Professor Chia Kee Seng, dean-designate at NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said: "There are many different factors that interplay to see whether a population will abide by a particular programme and a particular policy and you will need a lot of components and different disciplines to come together.
"The school of public health would be focusing on bringing the different disciplines, different sectors in the community together to address the prevention of a lot of these common health problems like chronic diseases as well as infectious diseases that we are facing."
Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said by attracting talent from around the world, regional and global collaborations will be further strengthened.
He said: "This school will fill a unique niche whereby local solutions can be developed and refined to address global health problems we face today. It can become the trusted brand for public health in the region, fostering regional and global research and training partnerships to this end."
The school will conduct research on three broad areas. These include the causes and preventive measures relating to chronic non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, cancer and heart disease.
The second area will be on the prevention and spread of communicable diseases and the third will be the development and evaluation of preventive healthcare services and policies.
There will be no departments within the school. Instead, it will be organized along four domains - epidemiology, biostatistics, health education and promotion, and health services and policy supporting research teams in the important disease groups such as cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, eye diseases and infectious diseases.
Mr Gan said his ministry will work closely with the school to evaluate the effectiveness of current health programmes and policies and explore ways to improve them.
The school is hoping to increase the number of its full-time academic staff from the current staff of 20 to about 60, and will also expand its intake for the Masters in Public Heath programme from 20 to about 50.
- CNA/cc/ac
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