Singapore launches scheme to help kids adopt healthy habits, ditch junk food

All children from Primary 1 to 3 will get a personalised health plan from 2025, as part of a new strategy to help them make healthy choices a way of life, and stave off illnesses as they get older.

While most children in Singapore are in good health, many have already picked up poor habits, including too much screen time and junk food, and too little exercise and sleep, as large-scale studies have borne out. This could have dire consequences later on. Already, there is a rising prevalence of mental health issues, especially among young people.

So, the Health, Education Social and Family Development ministries have come together to nip bad habits in the bud.

Grow Well SG, launched on Jan 21, aims to empower families to make sure children put down their mobile devices, eat well-balanced meals, get moving and have enough sleep, with support from pre-schools, schools, healthcare institutions and the community.

In addition, there will be a focus on relationships within the family and social connections with friends, a key component of healthy lifestyles.

The goals are to eat well, sleep well, learn well and exercise well.

At a Jan 21 press conference, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said there is strong evidence that the first 1,000 days of life are a crucial time when children develop good habits, which have a profound impact on their health as they grow up.The authorities have also collected enough evidence from studies showing that lifestyle habits from a young age affect the well-being of children as they grow up, he said.

These habits affect brain activity, cognitive development and executive function, which has to do with how children learn and take in information, process it and so on, he added.

Before this, Singapore had launched two other population health initiatives – the Healthier SG preventive care strategy and Age Well SG, which supports seniors in ageing well in their homes and communities.

Grow Well SG will start with children up to 12 years old, but will be extended to older age groups, and will build on the ministries’ various efforts, including the Child and Maternal Health and Well-being action plan in 2024.

For the children’s health plan, parents will have to complete a questionnaire on their child’s current habits at the start of the school year. Healthcare personnel will then be able to give the child a “lifestyle prescription” during the Health Promotion Board’s (HPB) annual school health screening programme.

This, together with school health screening results, vaccination reports and referrals to public healthcare institutions if needed, will be in the child’s health plan. It can be viewed on the national platform for digital health, HealthHub.“By doing a health plan, the conversation on maintaining a healthy lifestyle will start,” Ong told reporters gathered at Temasek Primary School, one of the 12 schools involved in a Grow Well SG pilot in 2024.

If a child watches a lot of TV and uses devices a lot, his health plan will say that he has to cut down on screen use, as the guidelines are for up to two hours of screen time outside of school, Ong said.

The child can then discuss the plan with his parents, he added.

Monica Loo, whose child, Emily Wong, participated in the pilot in 2024, said the plan is an opportunity for her to discuss healthier habits with her daughter, a Primary 2 pupil at Temasek Primary School.

For younger children, the Ministry of Health (MOH) will introduce a childhood health behaviours checklist later in 2025. This will be used during the seven routine childhood screenings in the first six years of life – which look at areas such as growth, and motor and language skills – to help identify children at risk of developmental delay who may require early intervention. MOH will release more details in the next few months.

A critical part of the multi-ministry strategy is getting children to use their screens more purposefully, and to limit screen time. For this, MOH has updated its screen use guidance.

Assistant Professor Evelyn Law, who gave input for the updates made to the advisory, said one of the key additions is for parents to not give their children unrestricted access to mobile devices. This will help prevent a game addiction problem, which studies have found is worse here than in many other countries.

Game addiction is associated with less sleep, less participation in school work, and an increase in mental health symptoms such as low mood, irritability and low energy, said the senior consultant at Khoo Teck Puat – National University Children’s Medical Institute, National University Hospital.

The Early Childhood Development Agency does not currently stipulate screen use guidelines for pre-schools.

But from Feb 1, these guidelines will kick in. They include asking pre-schools to not use screens to entertain children while they are waiting for their parents to pick them up, for instance, Minister of State for Social and Family Development Sun Xueling said at the press conference.



Furthermore, MOH and the Ministry of Education will be enhancing support for schools to enable them to improve student health. For one thing, all primary schools will have a comprehensive Student Health Status Card that includes lifestyle data for their population of pupils. This allows them to identify the needs of their pupils.

To get canteen vendors to serve healthier food options, HPB will step up efforts to help them buy lower-cost, healthier ingredients directly from manufacturers participating in HPB’s Healthier Ingredient Development Scheme.

Minister of State for Education Gan Siow Huang said that while schools will do their best to inculcate good values and develop good habits in children, parents will have to be a part of this approach for it to be successful.

“We hope that parents can play a stronger and more active role in promoting healthy lifestyle habits for the students.”

Joyce Teo

The Straits Times

Asia News Network

(2025/01/23-00:00)