Healthcare alone is not enough for good health.

A person’s lifestyle contributes 6 times more to good health than healthcare itself.

We invite social and health-minded innovators to submit their Grant proposal on mobilising communities to adopt healthier living. Successful applicants can receive grant funding of up to 75% of project costs, capped at $150,000 per year over 2 years.

Eligibility Criteria

Community organisations (eg. Social enterprises, Non-Profit Organisations) and organisations with prior experience conducting community-based initiatives

  • The organisation must be an entity registered with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) or the Registry of Societies
  • Interested in creating a health-related movement in the Western Region of Singapore and other sites
  • Good track record of serving the community
Submit Grant Enquiry

Studies1 show that 60% of a person’s health is impacted by social and behavioural factors that influence overall health outcomes, compared to healthcare which factors in at only 10%.

In Singapore, lifestyle-related chronic illnesses such as diabetes, obesity and hypertension continue to be on the rise – despite continued efforts to make quality healthcare more accessible and affordable.

Diabetes, hypertension and obesity are preventable and avoidable chronic conditions. Genetic predisposition weights in at 30%.

The increasing stressors of navigating work, family and life have also taken a toll on Singaporeans’ mental health and well-being.

In particular, sleep is an essential aspect of mental health. However, 42.5% of the working population in Singapore reported poor sleep quality and 66.2% have an average of <7 hours of sleep per night2.

1Determinants of Health and their Contribution to Premature Deaths: Schroeder’s 40/30/20/10 “rule-of-thumb”: (NEJM, 2007)  

2Prevalence of the factors associated with poor sleep quality and short sleep in a working population in Singapore: (Sleep Health, 2019)

CHALLENGE
STATEMENT

To co-create and drive sustainable social movements for health, by activating communities to adopt and advocate healthy behaviours through capability building and developing social connectedness.

KEY INSIGHTS

Singaporeans are expected to live longer but spend more time battling preventable chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes and hypertension, and mental health illnesses.


A 2021 survey* revealed that In 2020, 23.6% of Singaporeans had insufficient physical activity. Additionally, more than 50% of respondents led more sedentary lifestyles, despite recognising the importance of living a healthier lifestyle.

*Well-Series: Singapore. (2021). Retrieved 14 February 2022, from  https://www.wundermanthompson.com/insight/well-series

What is a marker of good health?

Mental and physical health are equally crucial for overall well-being. Getting sufficient quality sleep, eating healthily and exercising regularly are important to achieving good health. 


Average Life Expectancy is a traditional measure to benchmark a population’s health, which Singapore ranked number 1 in the world for men and women in 2019. How do we maximise our ‘good’ years, which is 60% within our control?

ABOUT THE FUND

What is the
Movements For
Health Fund?

The Movements For Health (M4H) Fund aims to help community partners initiate social movements that will activate communities to adopt and advocate healthier lifestyles to improve their health outcomes.

The project proposed must focus on influencing health behaviour relevant to the following themes for adults (40-60 years old) or children/youth:

  1. Physical Activity
  2. Nutrition
  3. Sleep

To ensure sustainability of M4H projects, grantee partners will receive support through programme training, coaching and development in aspects such as narrative design, innovation, financial sustainability in building their organisation’s capacity, and exposure opportunities to develop partnerships with community funders.

Funded by MOHT, all grantee partners will undergo health literacy training, to equip them with the baseline knowledge and skills to translate learnings on health into their movement project that will shape participants’ motivation, behaviours and habits.

Selected grantee partners will undergo an evaluation study during the course of their project’s movement ideas. This evaluation study is part of MOHT’s efforts to assess the effectiveness and impact of movement ideas, with a set of indicators measuring awareness of the Movement and adoption of healthier lifestyle behaviours.

moht

MOHT is a change agent-partner that facilitates and accelerates healthcare transformation. With MOH and partners, MOHT jointly designs and implements system-level solutions that better empower people to keep healthy and manage their chronic disease, and to develop a new health ecosystem that is well integrated, data-driven, and delivers value-based outcomes.

NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (NUS SSHSPH) was established in October 2011 as Singapore’s national school of public health and is a member of the National University Health System (NUHS). The School aims to continually foster healthier communities in Singapore and the region, and impact public health programmes and policies through its robust educational programmes and translational cross-disciplinary research work on cohort studies and life course epidemiology, infectious disease research, health technology assessments, health promotion, workplace safety and health, health systems evaluation and health services research.

NUS SSHSPH collaborates with MOHT to develop strategies for creating Movements for Health (M4H). They will also evaluate the effectiveness of the M4H Model and Community Movement Champions (CMC) or Grantee Partner-led health movements in promoting awareness, adoption, and advocacy of healthy behaviours. The aim is to identify effective strategies to grow and sustain health movements in the future.

Bold At Work equips youths and organisations with the tools and mindsets to define what good work means to them. They do this through introducing tools and processes, as well as running a youth innovation studio lab, that enable people to positively design their ways forward, both at the workplace and in the community.

Bold is a key partner, that will create engaging platforms and equip budding CMCs with the necessary mindsets and skills to create, scale and sustain movements for health. Bold will also coach CMCs on effective activation, alignment and action that can raise awareness, adoption and advocacy in growing movements for health. Finally, they will establish a platform and process for learning and outreach, document their effectiveness, and share the M4H work to rally others to join in.

Grant Panel

Our distinguished grant committee will oversee the grant approval process:

Dr Tan Weng Mooi (Chair person)

Director and Head (Integrated Health Promotion)

MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT)

Martin Tan

CEO, The Majurity Trust

Dr Rayner Tan Kay Jin

Visiting Research Fellow

Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore (NUS) Infections Diseases Research and Training Office at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) in Singapore

Application process
Grant call: 21 April - 29 May

We invite social and health-minded innovators to submit their Grant proposal. Successful applicants can receive grant funding of up to 75% of project costs, capped at $150,000 per year over 2 years.
Our team will follow up with you to determine your organisation’s eligibility for the Movements For Health Fund.

Invited applicants are required to submit the Movements For Health Application Form detailing the project objectives, milestones and the projected expenditure.

Our team will contact you with further clarifications to your application where required.
The grant panel, made up of representatives from the MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT), TMT, and experts in the field will evaluate the proposals, taking into consideration the alignment to the fund’s objectives, team track record, and the project implementation feasibility.
Successful applicants will receive up to 75% of the project cost, capped at $150,000 per year over 2 years.
Submit Grant Enquiry
Download Factsheet

Grantee Partners

Frequently Asked Questions

Submit a grant enquiry above. 

Applications open from June to July. Assessments will be conducted from July to August, and successful applicants will receive their 1st tranche of funding from October.

Individuals and ground-up groups can partner with an organisation on a movement idea / proposal. Similarly, organisations can partner up to form a movement.

A grant panel has been set up to assess applications and select organisations based on the strengths of the applicant’s leadership team, quality of the Movement idea and the organisation’s growth potential.

The grant can be used for project related costs such as start-up, operating costs, including manpower and purchase of assets. Post-approval, funds should only be used for the approved use stated in the proposal.

Successful applicants can receive grant funding of up to 75% of project costs, capped at $150,000 per year over 2 years.

Applicants will be informed of the outcome within 2 months from the end of the grant call.

All grantee partners have to undergo training for skills and competency in the areas of basic health (i.e: health literacy and translation of health knowledge to activities/application) and social movements (narrative strategy, intervention and culture change, etc), which is funded by MOHT.

TMT is the fund administrator for the Movements For Health Fund, to set up and manage the grant call and grant disbursement process.

The grant call is open from 21 April to 29 May.  Learn More