Mary Ann Tsao is the Chairman and Founding Director of the Tsao Foundation, a Singapore-based, but regionally oriented non-profit organisation dedicated to ageing and aged care. Chartered by her 86-year-old grandmother in 1993, the Tsao Foundation’s vision is an inclusive society for all ages that optimises opportunities in longevity. Through its four major initiatives – the Hua Mei Centre for Successful Ageing, Hua Mei Training Academy, International Longevity Centre Singapore, and Community for Successful Ageing (ComSA) – the Tsao Foundation pioneers innovative and replicable service models to enable healthy ageing and ageing in place. Its work has inspired and helped inform the programme development of other civil society and public organisations, both in Singapore and South East Asia.
Of the Tsao Foundation’s four major initiatives, the Community for Successful Ageing (ComSA) best represents Mary Ann Tsao’s innovative work in fostering healthy ageing through the Tsao Foundation. Established in 2017, ComSA is a pilot to build a community-wide model to implementing an integrated system of comprehensive programmes and services to healthy ageing within low-income estates in Singapore with a high concentration of older residents. Based in a centrally-located community centre, the one stop ComSA Centre has: 1) a health and social care integrated, person-centred medical home equipped to care for seniors with complex needs; 2) a home care team that provides home-based, palliative and end of life care; 3) a day centre; 4) a café run by local volunteers; 5) a ComSA Club (an older people’s association of community advocates) which takes actions by seniors, for seniors and for the community; 6) a Learning Room providing learning programs for self-care and caregiver training and support.
The ComSA’s aim to create a new, easily accessible, and replicable model for community-based care represents Mary Ann Tsao and the Tsao Foundation’s broader commitment to generating scalable innovations that foster healthy ageing and implement integrated care across a diverse range of contexts. Such leadership and innovations are the essential drivers for the catalytic change envisioned by the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing.