Guest lecturing in-person for the first time in about 2.5 years. Shortness of breath in the first 15 minutes 😂 (mask on + stage fright). Exhilarating ~ Actually feels a lot better than teaching over Zoom ❣️
Research @ migrant worker dorms.
I have been asked by several participants about when can they leave the dorms apart from work. I can see they are desperate to know.
I asked, how long has it been since they last went out? And they replied since early 2020.
My heart breaks 💔
Your Ph.D. supervisor isn’t always right. You don’t have to follow their advice or instructions all the time. Discuss.
#AcademicTwitter
#AcademicChatter
First day on the job! Feeling all kinds of ways but let me try and put it into words.
In 2015, during my senior year at SMU, I applied to about 20 different PhD programs in the United States. I got rejected from all of them.
Got my mRNA vaccine booster today!
Was asked for an emergency contact at the vax centre and I gave “my partner’s” contact. The screener then asked me what “their” name was.
Really doesn’t take much to make me feel worthy and included. I take what I can get here in SG…
A short clip of Reshii and I chatting with CNA about the Project Hayat National Suicide Prevention Strategy White Paper, on behalf of the Working Group.
(I was so tired you can see my Tourette’s tics firing off quite a bit 😂)
Full interview at:
Thanks
@nuscollege
and the Asian Undergraduate Symposium for the opportunity to be on this expert panel on ‘Diversity and Inclusion’. I got the chance to speak on how effective community engagement can ensure that diversity and inclusion are logical outcomes of a systemic design.
With all this talk about ‘safeguarding’ against same-sex marriage and adoption of children. What we aren’t talking about enough is being an LGBTQ person in the context of ageing and a rapidly ageing society in Singapore, and how this will affect LGBTQ Singaporeans as we age.
1/n
‘Reviving’ my account ahead of an exciting chapter, professionally. I will be joining the
@NUSingapore
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health as an Assistant Professor on the Tenure Track from October 2023 😊
Talk to me about MPH/PhD apps. Time to get cracking on those grants!
At the HIV Community Engagement Forum 2023 today sharing about my experiences with communicating U=U in relationships, and the living the behavioural scientific aspects of viral suppression for HIV!
#uequalsu
#hiv
#community
With Zach, a year 4 medical student who led the study. It has been a joy working with and mentoring him! Thanks to
@Grindr4Equality
@Grindr
for the opportunity to roll out this survey on Mpox vaccine acceptance that provided local data to support the JYNNEOS vaccine rollout.
Yes, HIV sounds scary.
I understand why you are fearful of it, why you feel that this individual should be punished, and where this probably comes from. We are socialized and programmed to fear it.
1/n
Today, the Singapore Court of Appeal ruled to retain Section 377A of the Penal Code which criminalizes ‘gross indecency’ between men. Terribly disappointing. The fight to exert our personhood and retain our dignity continues. We will get there as a community.
Thanks to
@voguesingapore
for the opportunity to briefly share about my struggles growing up as an LGBTQIA+ individual in Singapore, my journey of recovery from substance addiction, and my hopes for improving the mental well-being of LGBTQIA+ youth in SG.
Feelin’ my new hairdo 💇♂️
Off to Guangzhou 广州 for the
@sesh_global
and the Southern Medical University Implementation Science conference! Can’t wait to meet old friends and colleagues 😍💕
Policymaking is a tough job, but framing a problem as lax enforcement or non-compliance masks suboptimal design in policies meant to govern human behavior. Makes me wonder how many social/behavioral scientists there are in the decision-making bodies.
cw: suicide
LGBTQ youth are at greater risk of suicide. We have data here showing this, alongside links to risk factors like stigma.
Ex-NMP Anthea Ong and I ask: can we do more in our policies to address such vulnerabilities?
Here’s our attempt to speak the truth in love. 1/4
"During one of the performances, Queer-Tai, one performer was on stage in drag attire. Given the sensitivities associated with the said performance, it should not have been staged as a public event”
What are these sensitivities? NTU should explain more.
The most tangible effect
#repeal377a
will have in my work is that I no longer have to inform participants that they should not disclose their sexual practices under S377A or I may need to report them to the relevant authorities. 🤡
…Time to file those protocol amendments.
So surreal embarking on my
#Fulbright
visiting scholarship to
@UNC
! I will continue work with my mentors
@WeimingTang3
and
@JosephTucker
on exciting pay-it-forward interventions and totally looking forward to meeting colleagues in Chapel Hill and other parts of the USA!
I stop myself from getting emotional/grateful.
I tell myself the road to equality is long and suffering remains a reality for many.
But tonight I am just asking for some space to just exist.
So that I may be renewed to continue on this road tomorrow.
#meditation
#Section377A
Throwback to
#QuantumOfTheSeas
two weeks ago 🛳. It was nice working with this view (internet connectivity was surprisingly amazing) and having a pseudo vacay.
Let’s see if 2022 is the year for ✈️
Pritam came by to thank all the volunteers personally, and handed all of us lunch and bottled water @ Aljunied GRC. What a great guy and leader. Congrats to
@wpsg
and to Singapore in advance for such a fantastic
#GE2020
outcome with such qualified and diverse representatives.
Nominated for best PhD thesis but regrettably informed I’ve not been selected 🥲 I saw the notification pop up amidst a peer support session and I am so grateful to be given immediate perspective on my daily meditations: to have gratitude, humility and trust in the universe! 🙏❤️
We cannot stop demanding for actual comprehensive sexuality education in Singapore. To conflate ideology and propaganda with sexuality education is such a disservice to the nation’s sexual well-being and health.
Thank you
@Prestige_SG
♥️
I want to say that privilege got me here, and I hope to use that privilege to upend and change the very structures that have made my work and labor legible. 🙃
Prestige 40 Under 40 Class of 2021, Singapore
It’s really wild that Singapore’s
@UN_HRC
UPR national report has a section on the “Protection of LGBTI Community”, while still keeping the law criminalising sex between men (s377A) - the report doesn’t mention s377A anywhere 😅
#wildride
Psyched to be awarded my first competitive research grant (Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1)! 😊😊😊
Excited to embark on this work with co-investigators A/P Natasha Howard (Public Health) and A/P Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan (Sociology and Anthropology).
Applied for a tenure track position back in Singapore (public health department) and have a campus visit coming up. This includes a presentation and meetings with faculty, through which I would be evaluated. Any tips or advice appreciated!
#AcademicTwitter
#Academia
Not making that mistake with stigma again - being gay/bi/queer is NOT a risk factor for Monkeypox. It sounds like close contact (including sexual activity) is a risk factor. Anyone can get it. It just happens to be spreading in networks which are arguably denser among GBQ men…
“The government will repeal Section 377A, and decriminalize sex between men. I believe this is the right thing to do, and something that most Singaporeans will now accept.”
Welcome to The Courage Lab at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health,
@NUSingapore
and
@NUHS_sg
. I’m so excited to introduce my team and the work we are doing! I’ve always dreamt of having my own ‘dry lab’. More information in the link below:
Trauma brain (“you-don’t-deserve-good-things-brain”) always be like:
Things are going so well right now wouldn’t it be a pity if you didn’t wake up tomorrow
Accepted! Happy to share our labor of love on developing a trauma-informed framework to understanding chemsex among treatment-experienced GBMSM. We note critiques of critical chemsex studies, and have narrowed the scope of our work accordingly.
Really gutted I can’t be there for
@isstdr
#STIHIV2023
!
My visa did not clear admin processing in time. Many have been perplexed as to why (1) I need a visa and (2) why it has taken awhile to process, and above all this comes on the heels of my Fulbright. So let me explain:
Had a blast at the annual
@sesh_global
conference with old friends as well as colleagues from the Guangdong Dermatology Hospital. Presented on Harm Reduction and Chemsex, and gave a capacity-building talk on qualitative data analysis!
Sydney was fab! Our team presented on Chemsex, HIV PrEP, and community engagement at
#IUSTI2024
.
Thanks
@EricPFChow
and Jo-Anne for your leadership and opportunity to contribute on the organising committee!
Also finally got my 2nd Mpox vaccine shot - thank you 🇦🇺 🙏
Photos from a recent talk in Bangkok organised by
@IHRIOfficial
on reducing harms for people engaging in sexualized drug use. The panels also focused on putting principles of undetectable=untransmittable (U=U) messaging and harm reduction into practice.
I am so chuffed to share that it’s my first time a paper of mine has been accepted in a
@Nature_NPJ
partner journal (and in an IF>10 journal). Privileged to have been able to work on this with legends like
@Dan_Wu_SESH
@JosephTucker
. Can’t wait to share this piece when it’s out!
I made it to Guangzhou! 🔥 My journey in numbers:
12 months
7 plane tickets (mostly got cancelled)
5 vaccine shots (PPM+2xSinopharm)
5 PCR tests
2 work permits
2 visas
I will make the best of my time here with the lovely and amazing
@sesh_global
team ❤️❤️❤️
First time being examiner for a PhD thesis - such a joy and privilege. I remember the relief and pride I felt submitting mine. Especially privileged because acknowledgments were so beautifully written - a reminder to honor the love, and support I’ve received in my own journey.
This is beyond terrible. Time to get the conversation and work on abolishing the death penalty going again 🇲🇾.It is always those who are desperate and at the bottom end of the chain that pays the price. It hasn’t and will never solve the drug problem.
Last couple of sunny days in GZ before the rain hits! Can’t decide which I prefer - trekking in the 41 degrees celcius heat or manoeuvring across puddles in downpours 😫
Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine dose
#2
done ✅ PSA: In Singapore you can have your Pfizer vaccine if your CD4 > 200. There is no need to declare your HIV status otherwise as it is not relevant.
No grant? No problem. Another example of self/small/crowd funded, citizen-science work to advance LGBTQI+ health in Singapore. Leveraging collaborations with passionate medical students, community groups, and educators to make this study happen!
I received nearly 30 article peer review invitations in Oct 2023. I bet others receive more! At this rate I can only review about 10% of them. Is this sustainable practice for academia? I think journal editorial teams are facing similar issues with shortages of peer reviewers.
I mean we saw this coming right? None of us should be surprised given vaccine inequities and privileging of corporate interests. A potential collision with a previous epidemic we have yet to resolve. A biomedical
#syndemic
.
𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻 𝗨𝗻𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱
We cannot address mental health without first acknowledging that the distribution of health and illness is unequal to start with. My contribution to Rice Media for World Mental Health Day 2021.
#WorldAIDSDay
What is remembered lives 🕊
For me, World AIDS Day is not just a rallying call to end HIV and AIDS, but also to remember those that I have lost to HIV. Yes, the days of perishing from AIDS are no longer a reality for many Singaporeans.
Wearing the hugest smile here because my head and heart are both so full! Meeting all these superstar academics and having the opportunity to interact with such a wonderful room of friends and intellectuals. Really full of love and warmth in the room.
Excited to be a keynote speaker for The Australasian Epidemiological Association Annual Meeting in Melbourne this week!
I will be speaking on the topic: “Integrating community engagement and social epidemiology to achieve health equity in sexual health.”
I’m a little mindblown that I’ll be on the same panel as these giants but I will try to maintain 😂 this workshop/panel is organised by
@yalenuscollege
as part of Diversity Week 2021. It is open to the public and will be broadcast on zoom. Come say hi!
Sexual behavioral concepts I learnt from my colleagues today:
“Friends with Benefits”: We are friends AND we have sex
“Booty Call”: We regularly hook up but we aren’t friends!
“One Night Stand”: We aren’t friends and we probably won’t see each other again!
Nuance!
I’m thinking of calling my ‘lab’ The Courage Lab, to honour my scholarship, but also because it resonates; someone once told me that courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to walk through it. I’m not perfect, but this has helped me live as authentically as I can.
Chemsex as lines of flight? Critical Deleuzean perspectives on chemical intimacies
Out now in
@ijdrugpolicy
🥰
I conducted the interviews and Dr Qian Hui brought her expertise in queer Deleuzean theory. I learnt so much through this fun/amazing collab!
Singapore HIV Congress 2023 - thanks to the National HIV Programme and NCID for a fab conference.
@sgbehaviour
co-organised a session on sociobehavioral and implementation sciences, featuring talks on pay-it-forward strategies
@Dan_Wu_SESH
, qualitative and citizen-led research.
Instead, doesn’t this law incentivise not getting tested so that one would think that one doesn’t have to bear this responsibility of disclosing their HIV status?
Instead, doesn’t it further stigmatise HIV - creating even more disincentives for disclosure or testing?
5/n
#AIDS2022
is now underway!
Here are some e-posters for studies that I've contributed to in Singapore and beyond. These include studies on size estimation of key pops in SG, on people living with HIV in SG, and on how venues impact risk for female sex workers in Tijuana.
Should we arrest someone facing a mental health crisis?
A bill tabled in March 2024 proposed expanding police powers to do so.
I had the privilege of co-authoring an opinion piece regarding this new bill in the
@straits_times
with ex-NMP Anthea Ong and DPA’s Cassandra Chiu.
We welcomed Member of Parliament and Minister of State,
@MSFCares
Sun Xueling to The Greenhouse over the weekend. Privileged to have her support for the addiction recovery work we do with vulnerable communities in Singapore!
Help more people recover from addiction! Our campaign to raise funds at The Greenhouse ends in 11 days. We are a registered charity and every $ you give by 31 Mar 2022 is matched by Tote Board and then our board of directors too for four times the impact.
#Dec17
is International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers! Join us in our 3rd webinar where we try to locate the place for sex workers in current occupational safety and health frameworks.
I wrote a book chapter on 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗗𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 (SDOH) for the Springer Handbook of Social Inclusion. I hope it it benefits someone!
Accepted copy:
Navigating the space between personal (my drug use / HIV) and the professional has been something I struggle(d) with, and so this editorial resonates so much with me. I’m so excited to read the contributions to this issue in
@ijdrugpolicy
!
Thank you to
@tim__rhodes
@ijdrugpolicy
for encouraging an issue authored by people who use drugs &
@nicolemluongo
for providing the impetus & inspiration to make it happen. An honour to work with contributing authors, showcased here:
Help! Does anyone know what the first steps involved are in publishing an academic (social science, fieldwork-based) book these days? Any resources or recommendations on where to find resources would be useful 😊
#AcademicChatter