Background of MOH and the Ischaemic Heart Disease

MOH is the Singapore Government arm that manages the public healthcare system to ensure that good and affordable basic medical services are available to all Singaporeans.

They provide subsidised medical services while promoting individual responsibility for the costs of healthcare services. The also encourage the Singapore population to adopt a healthy lifestyle, taking responsibility for one’s own health. Safety nets are provided however, to ensure that no Singaporean is denied access into the healthcare system or turned away by public hospitals because of lack of money.

Coronary Artery Disease (Ischaemic Heart Disease) Coronary artery disease is a blockage or narrowing (stenosis) of the arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle, often due to a buildup of fatty plaque inside the arteries. A severe enough blockage may cause a heart attack.

Rationale for topic and choice of organisation

The Ischaemic Heart Disease is the second cause of death in Singapore, responsible for 16,7% of deaths in 2015. A huge lack of public information and education on this disease is evident and as Singapore has an ageing population, it will be vital to increase the awareness of this disease and ways to prevent it. The Ministry of Health is the official health organisation that strives to promote good health and reduce illness by ensuring access to good and affordable healthcare and information.

Project goals

The main goal for our project will be to increase the awareness of the Ischaemic Heart Disease by specifically increasing the awareness of the causes and the prevention methods and by ensuring that these messages are delivered to the right target audience. The main message will therefore be the deadliness, the causes and the simple prevention methods and check up procedures of the disease.

To say that we only want to target high-risk individuals would be too narrow-sighted. No human is immune to this disease and if the younger generation gains enough knowledge to protect themselves in the future, then our secondary goal will also be fulfilled. However, our primary goal is definitely to seek out the people with high risk factors, specifically people from 40 years and older because of a higher susceptibility for high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, lack of exercise, obesity, high blood cholesterol, poor diet, excessive alcohol or depression.

Methods

Facebook

We chose Facebook to be our main method of spreading awareness as we have statistics to support the notion that most people categorized under high-risk are usually aged 40 and above, and Facebook has the highest amount of people in that age range compared to other popular social media. It is important to note that while Facebook has the highest amount of people in that age range, it is still relatively low when compared to other ages in Facebook itself.

Blog

Therefore, we have included blogs as another option for people to gain awareness. Blogs are more easily accessible and it is possible to visit it anonymously without any sign ups. We are taking into consideration that the older generation may be more concerned about their privacy. In the blogs, we also plan to create anonymous forums so that people can openly share their experience as well. This way, we not only provide information from the official medical team, but experiences that the people have themselves.

Execution (Strategies)

Certified Facebook page

It is very important that our Facebook page is officially verified to be under the MOH. People value credibility most when it comes to their health. We must make the followers aware that the information we give come only from valid scientific research sources that MOH has deemed worthy. This will allow people to help us spread our cause through sharing in Facebook.

Certified Blog

For our blog, the way we will make it officially recognized should be slightly different. The posts made by the admin should clearly be verified. However, since there will be an anonymous forum in the blog, we must not confuse the readers who may not be tech-savvy, as they might think people posting in the forum to be experts themselves.

Recommendation

We will actively seek those in need of our assistance. As such, we will try to work together with doctors and nurses that are officially registered under MOH. They can recommend existing patients or people facing high risk after consultation to follow our Facebook page. If people are not comfortable with following us on Facebook, they can go to our blog anonymously to be kept updated.

Benefits

Besides the information that people can gather from our posts, we want to give more benefits to our followers other than just information, as they may feel that such information is easily obtainable simply by googling, although information may not always be correct or updated there. We may provide subsidies or free treatment through our Facebook page, in order to encourage more people to follow our page to make them aware of their health.

Effectiveness of analysis

We distinguished two different analysis of effectiveness, both a short-term and a long-term analysis. For the short-term analysis, we want to use Facebook Analytics to monitor page likes, post views, number of shares. Also, we would use Website Analytics to monitor the website traffic and distribute polls and surveys to track the usefulness of the posts. For the long-term analysis, we will distribute surveys to track the changes in awareness and the changes in percentage of deaths caused by Ischaemic Heart Disease to see whether increasing the awareness of the disease on social media platforms actually decreases the number of deaths in Singapore.

Conclusion

Our focus will be on promoting the awareness of Ischaemic Heart disease through the Ministry of Health. We hope that through these campaigns, there will be better circulation of information and knowledge on the causes and preventive measures for Ischaemic heart disease.

Through this project, we also hope to show that social media can be used beyond the conventional business context and can be effective in promoting social awareness.

Done by: Zhang Qijia, Tan Yi Jie Dawn, Kimberly Abraas.