Wai Chiong Loke

Biographie : In my current role within Ministry of Health Office for Healthcare Transformation, specifically in leading the Integrated Health Promotion, Financing Redesign and Digital Mental Health workstreams, our teams focus on activating communities (starting movements for health) and influencing physical environment (through the building of Healthy Precincts) to make it more health-promoting, aiming to intervene upstream in population health, preventing rather than reacting/ curing when disease sets in. We also deeply appreciate how social determinants of health influence behaviours, lifestyles and ultimately health outcomes, and hence design interventions to tackle these upstream. I believe that solutions to the most "wicked" and sticky problems facing us in population health and in building healthy cities of the future, lie in systems leadership and employing multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches. It will require the collaborative and combined passion and energy of different like-minded experts, partnering cross-sector, to bring about sustainable significant impact. For example, in Singapore, we have brought together different ministries and agencies and funding sources, to develop new solutions for healthy cities for the future. What we need are more ideas and inspirations from everywhere, around the world, to both learn from and scale the best solutions or lessons.