In 2007, a small group of enthusiastic medical students found a gap in the healthcare system that they believed they could help bridge. They pooled what little resources they had, garnered the support of their teachers, and introduced Singapore’s first student-organised health screening.

Thirteen years later, the Neighbourhood Health Service (NHS) has grown by leaps and bounds to become NUS Medicine's iconic community service project. It is the only student-led School project that has nationwide reach and scale – having partnered all three Regional Health Systems to serve more than 6,000 residents in 7 different districts, from Taman Jurong to Eunos Crescent.

Whilst NHS remains a NUS Medicine student-led initiative, we also value inter-professional education through engaging medical, nursing, social work, physiotherapy and occupational therapy students from other institutions such as NTU, Nanyang Polytechnic and Singapore Institute of Technology.

Although many things have changed since 2007, one thing has not – our core ethos of serving the underserved. We know from our research that lower-income residents living in HDB rental blocks are four times less likely than the average Singaporean to go for regular health checkups – hence our mission to reach out to them at their doorsteps.