President’s Message

Dear Members & Friends,

Our 2019-2022 distinguished Executive Committee members’ term came to an end, and a new Executive Committee members were elected during our AGM on 14 May 2022. I am honoured to be your incoming President and I want to acknowledge the work and leadership provided by A/Prof Konstadina Griva and last years’ Executive Committee team. It’s the Society’s privilege that A/Prof Konstadina Griva will continue the great work that she has done for the growth of the Society in the role of Past President. I am excited to welcome the new members to the Executive Committee team, new and returning members who I am certain will successfully fulfil their predecessors’ shoes! Please join me in welcoming VP: Dr Rayner Kay Jin Tan, Secretary: Ms Iman Fahim Hameed, Treasurer: Dr Ellie Choi, and our Executive committee members: Ms Nurliyana Daros, Ms Regina Gowindah, and Dr Clive Tan (https://www.sgbehaviouralhealth.com/our-team). I look forward to serving the Society of Behavioral Health (Singapore) as President, but I am humbled too, especially considering the outstanding and inspiring leaders who have started and nurtured this Society throughout the years. I want to extend a special THANK YOU to my predecessor, A/Prof Konstadina Griva, for her leadership and mentoring. I also want to thank our funding organizations because our progress would not have been possible without their continued support.

I know and have built relationships with some of you through the Society and/or work, but for those whom I have not met, let me share with you my path towards becoming involved with this young but imperative organization.

I started my career as a nurse and went into counselling and coaching in 2000. Since then, I founded my own practice in coaching and capability building in preventive health, mental health, and ageing, and have worked with many organisations the healthcare, senior services and education sectors including Health Promotion Board, SingHealth, Tsao Foundation, Johnson and Johnson, National University of Singapore (School of Medicine) and more recently Nanyang Technological University. I am also developer for numerous national competency-based curriculum and authored two books and articles.

When I joined the Society in 2019, I liked that it provided great access to education opportunities, but unfortunately due to the pandemic, networking opportunities were vastly reduced.

In 2022, with our highly successful vaccination programme and the Omicron variant, life is slowly transiting back to the pre-pandemic days, we will be increasing our focus on interactivity, getting to know you better and providing you with more opportunities to learn and share among one another. We understand that having a strong professional network that you can call on with a difficult question helps you do your job better, we will be enhancing the quality and diversity of our programming moving forward, and yes, definitely beyond topics on Covid-19. Please keep a lookout for our outreach emails and do turn up for the upcoming educational events, curiosity sessions and social events if you are free so that we can meet you.

The Executive Committee team’s and my priorities will be to:

(1) Engage our members to become even more involved with the Society both locally and the Global International Society of Behavioral Medicine via the organised events, special interest groups – Health Coaching, Narrative Medicine (Person-centred Practice), Sports, Exercise, Medicine - or as co-opt members.

(2) Help our members to grow professionally - by improving your knowledge base and skill sets through the publications, talks, workshops and conferences provided by the Society or by advancing your career through our network.

(3) Continue to provide you with solutions and opportunities through the Society’s resources that will help you pursue greatness in your work as well as in your community.

Our work at the Society is focused on enriching your experience as members, so we love to hear from you, your feedback, idea, suggestion, comment, improvement on our current offerings and how we can better serve you. As a young Society, we need all the help we can get to push things through. Please do not hesitate contact me, any of our Exco team, or Secretariat.

I’m looking forward to a fantastic 2022, and I am thankful to be able to work closely with all the passionate and talented people like yourself to make it all possible! The SoBH community has so much to look forward to as we strive to bring our members better offerings and benefits in line with our long-term goals to work together to plan, implement and evaluate behavioural interventions to tackle obesity and other lifestyle-related diseases via a multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral approach. As the Executive Committee members are all volunteers, we really do need all the help that we can get. Lastly, you’ll be hearing from us in the near future as we embark on our journey to know you and your thoughts better via a survey.

See you around :)

Susan Tan