Health Communication and Promotion in Singapore

As Singapore continue to progress and prosper, health issues will forever be a cause of concern for us. From Statistics, one in nine Singaporeans has diabetes. Almost twenty-four percent of Singaporeans have high blood pressure. Singapore Promotion Board, a government organisation committed to promoting healthy living in Singapore, has also implemented a few measures to encourage individuals in order to improve their lifestyle which will improve health issues of Singaporeans. One of the programs is the Healthy 365 mobile application whereby Singaporeans will be encouraged to use the application to exercise regularly and take note of their diet as well. We will discuss the health communication theories and effectiveness of the program in the subsequent part of the essay.

One of the measures that Health Promotion Board took to reduce health issues in Singapore was introducing the Healthy 365 health and diet tracking mobile application. This mobile app enables users to track the number of steps that they took, the distance they travelled, how much calories are being burnt as they move as well. They can also record down what type of food they have consumed for the day and know how much calories they need to burn for the day. There are many challenges in the app such as the National Steps Challenge whereby participants will accumulate the amount of steps they will take and earn health points as well. Health Promotion Board will be given free heart-rate monitoring fitness tracker to aid in the tracking of steps at various community centres and schools as well. After reaching 10,000 steps per day, participants will not only be able to receive 40 health points, but also two free lucky draws which give them amazing deals sometime. After collecting up to 750 points, participants can claim rewards such as NTUC vouchers, AsiaMalls e-vouchers and more.

We will talk about how Fogg Behaviour Model is being utilized in this case. The model explains that for a target behaviour to occur, the person must have reached a certain amount of motivation, ability and an effective trigger. Health Promotion board wants Singapore Citizens to exercise or take note of the food they consume by persuading them to use the Healthy 365 health and diet tracking mobile application. The behaviour of using the Healthy 365 app is the target behaviour.

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One of the important factor in FBM is motivation. We know that there is always low motivation to downloading an app unless there is a reason for it as there are already many different fitness application that have the features that Healthy 365 has. In order to tackle this issue of low motivation, Health Promotion Board has introduced the National Steps Challenge whereby health points can be earned and traded for rewards and lucky draws. At the same time, free heart-rate monitoring fitness tracker are given out at community centres which are near where most people stay as well. These actions by the Health Promotion Board increased the pleasure of the individuals which in turn increased the level of motivation of individuals to use the Healthy 365 app.

The next important factor in FBM is ability. The ability to use Healthy 365 app is definitely not very high as users will just need to download the app from the app store of their respective phones which many already have the experience of doing it. There is an instruction manual that is accompanied by the fitness tracker. At the collection points of the trackers, there are people guiding them to link the trackers with the app as well. There is no cost involved in using this app. it is routine as well as walking is a natural thing for most humans as they would need to walk from places to places. Therefore, having no cost involved to use the Healthy 365 app, low physical effort to use the Healthy 365 app and the routine task to do which is walking for the National Steps Challenge, it will increase the ability of the individual to use the Healthy 365 app.

The last important factor in FBM is trigger. Healthy 365 app uses notifications from the app to trigger the individuals to use the Healthy 365 app. The notifications will tell the user about their previous incomplete steps and encourage to work harder if they did not manage to complete 10,000 steps for the previous day. The notification uses spark as trigger if individuals have low motivation to complete if their fatigue level is higher for the day. Therefore, spark trigger is being used in the form of notifications from the app which leads to more people using the Healthy 365 app.

In Conclusion, we can see how FBM is being used in the Healthy 365 mobile app and how the three factors (motivation, ability and trigger) leads to one’s individual behaviour. I believe that the Healthy 365 mobile app can be further improved by using the self-determination theory(SDT). It was found that using extrinsic motivation such as rewards will result in decreasing intrinsic motivation as individual’s autonomy needs are being manipulated. (Gagne & Deci, 2005) . Thus, rather than increasing motivation to encourage the behaviour that Health Promotion Board wanted, rewarding a behaviour with rewards might in turn make a person feel controlled and reduce their intrinsic motivation. Lewis, Swartz, and Lyons (2016) suggested that this issue can be having verbal rewards or rewards of glory instead. Verbal rewards includes emotions or likes that can be provided by others maybe community instead. Rewards of glory includes titles of certain achievements that can provide bragging rights such as ‘1,000,000 steps accomplisher’ or ‘consecutive 30 days challenger’.