Team:NJTech China/Public Engagement
Education & Public Engagement
Combined with the project background, we designed activities related to breast cancer. First, we used questionnaires to understand the public's attitudes to breast cancer. Moreover, based on the survey results, we produced a brochure to answer the general doubts in the audience. In order to effectively propaganda iGEM and synthetic biology, we carry out online and offline methods. For online program, attractive comics adapted from synthetic biology actual cases were published on social networking platform and receive praises from students and teachers, and dairy about race preparations were recorded on weibo, the most open platform forexpression available in China. At the same time, for off line program, we held high school and university presentations to expand the influence of the competition and attract people to participate in. In addition, we pay more attention to left-behind children and teach them simple biology courses weekly. All of the above feedback indicate that our series of actions had a positive and profound influence on the audience.
1.PUBLIC SCIENCE
Overview：
During the early social activities, the pink ribbon worn by our team members attracted a lot of attention, but most people mistakenly think it represents AIDS awareness. We realized that large population in China does not aware the meaning of the pink ribbon. Pink ribbons are a hallmark of the global campaign for breast cancer prevention awareness. Breast cancer, as the most important malignant tumor threatening women's lives, is undoubtedly the number one killer. October is the World Breast Cancer Prevention Month. We intended to take this opportunity to appeal to more women to pay attention to breast health and men to care for the health of every woman around them. In summary, we designed a series of activities called “Pink Ribbon DO YOU KNOW”.
Procedure：
The activity consisted of two parts. In the early stage, the questionnaire survey was conducted to learn the public's attitudes and understanding towards breast cancer. The results of the questionnaire survey were analyzed later, and corresponding brochures were produced to answer the common questions public had.
The results of the questionnaire survey were analyzed later, and corresponding brochures were produced to answer the common doubts in the audience.
Feedback：
Our publicity effort was an overwhelmingly success. We hope that we can work with relevant government departments in the future, and upgrade such activities with longer duration and rich contents.
Questionaire Review
The survey respondents had a large age span and were affected by different levels of education. To a certain extent, wo are able to obtain universal results. At the same time as the questionnaire process, we also explained the questions in the questionnaire for respondents, and everyone's feedback was good.The survey results are as follows
Analysis
1.Understanding about breast cancer treatment:
Breast cancer is the malignant tumor with the highest incidence and mortality among female diseases worldwide. It is a serious harm to women's life and health, accounting for 30% of all malignant tumors, and increases at a rate of 2% per year. In recent years, the incidence of breast cancer in women has been younger, and most patients are younger than 35 years old. However, during the investigation, we found that 70% of people did not know which department should be seen in breast cancer. According to the interview, these respondents were healthy and no relatives were sick, so there was no understanding of the treatment of the disease.
Of the people surveyed, 78% knew that both women and men were at risk of developing breast cancer, while the remaining 22% said they did not understand. And 78% of respondents believe that the disease of breast cancer will be affected by genetic factors. This shows that 22% of people do not understand the basic morbidity of breast cancer, and the corresponding awareness of the audience needs to be strengthened.
2. Breast self-test
We found that only 13% of the women interviewed knew and mastered the breast self-test method, 62% of women only knew a little, and 25% of women did not understand. Although 42% of the patients in the questionnaire will self-examine the breasts regularly, because most people still have blind spots on breast self-test methods, breast safety problems are easily overlooked. Fortunately, when breast show abnormal performance, most people are willing to seek medical attention in time. As shown in the figure, there are still about 30% of people think that when the symptoms are not serious, they can recover on their own.
The questionnaire data shows that half of the people from four ways to learn about the information about breast cancer, network, reading, others told, and life experience. The remaining half people don't understand any information about breast cancer.
3. Breast cancer surgery
Breast cancer treatment methods are mostly performed by breast-conserving surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, targeted therapy, and mastectomy. The results showed that 75% of people recognized that mastectomy was a life-saving act, 9% feared that the surgery was not effective, and 13% thought the surgery would cause physical defects.
4. Summary of the questionnaire
All in all, we found that most people lack sufficient experience in breast self-examination. And the overall population showed a positive attitude, everyone is willing to take the initiative to understand breast health knowledge. Therefore, how to avoid the risk of breast cancer is particularly critical. Based on the analysis results of the questionnaire, we have produced a corresponding brochure with a scientific breast self-test method. We sincerely hope that the brochure could help female to discover, prevent and treat with breast cancer timely. May every woman be healthy and beautiful forever.
2. Education
Primary School
Overview：
In early July, we got in touch with a community of left-behind children (children whose parents work in different city and the caretakers are grandparent or relatives) in Nanjing. After many discussions, we decided to take advantage of the summer vacation to bring simple biology courses to the children in this community (average age is about ten). Our purpose was clear: we hope to bring good quality courses to those areas with limited educational resources access. Left-behind children are in such an environment, so they are unable to receive new things timely. Synthetic biology, as an emerging discipline in the booming field of biology, helps children to realize the frontier of biology has transitioned from “understanding life” to “designing life”. We were very pleased to give those children the opportunity to experience the magic and beauty of synthetic biology.
Procedure：
Our course has two parts: explaining the basics of biology and synthetic biology. We started the course in an interactive way, and gave them enough time to ask questions and to discuss during the class time. Because the course is aimed at children, we had introduced animations and movies to inspire their biological thinking. For example, we introduced the concept of genetic engineering via Spider-Man's supersonic ability. This way allowed children to quickly understand the concept of synthetic biology.
Feedback：
Children were very interested in synthetic biology, and often shared their novel ideas with us. They were amazed at how small and intricate structures can be discovered in cells, and they also wondered how cells utilize these structures to function. The children’s questions were answered after the course, and everyone grasped some advanced biological terms. In addition, the children were inspired to use their imagination to design their own small synthetic creatures. After all courses were over, we received feedback from those children about our courses. They liked the course very much, and some of them hoped that we can provide in depth knowledge about this topic later. Taking the opinions of the children into account, we plan to set up a library corner in the community and put some biological books there regularly so that children can get more information in their own place.
3. Promote iGEM & Synthetic Biology
3.1 Senior School
Overview：
We have learned that there are currently five universities and one high school participating in the iGEM competition in Nanjing. Although there is one high school student group participant for iGEM competition, most of high schooler are not aware of this competition. Therefore, as a participating team, we hope that our presentation will attract more high school students to pay attention and participate.
After detailed preparations, we held a seminar in Nanjing Yuhuatai Senior High School. Our purpose is not only to expand the influence of iGEM, but also to stimulate high school students' interest in synthetic biology in the future. We selected seniors with study emphasis on physical and biological science as our audience. They have good biological background knowledge and can understand synthetic biology better, so they are more likely to participate in iGEM competition later on.
Procedure：
Our presentation gave an introductory on the synthetic biology, which includes the history of synthetic biology, core concepts and technical routes. Due to the engineering characteristics of synthetic biology, we have explained in detail the scope of its application and some classic case studies. In addition, our team members tried to explained novel knowledge with humor, which generated enthusiasm of the students present. For the second part of our presentation, we gave a systematical introduction about iGEM: how one can participate in iGEM and what it takes to be an iGEMer. At the same time, we also shared with them our preparations for the competition this past few months, and showed them what kind of opportunity was given to the participants.
Feedback：
The presentation was well received. After the meeting, everyone showed great enthusiasm about synthetic biology and kept asking us various interesting questions. We also interviewed some of students and learned that they hope to learn synthetic biology by participating in iGEM, which made us very excited. After this high school trip, we successfully inspired more high school students to focus on iGEM and synthetic biology, and each of us was excited about it.
3.2 University
Overview：
Since this is our first year for this event, we realized that students in our university also did not have a very good understanding of iGEM. We planned to give presentation to show our daily work routine and team works, and hoped to attract more talented students to participate in the next year's competition. Our presentation was given to the freshmen of the College of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Engineering, and the School of Pharmacy Sciences.
Procedure：
Freshmen were full of curiosity and yearning for university life, which made our publicity event very effectively. Once the news for the presentation was issued, the students were enthusiastic to register. Due to the large number of applicants, we had to take two sessions to accommodate them. The presentation introduced four aspects: "synthetic biology", "application of synthetic biology", "iGEM-race" and "iGEMer-entrant". The content covered the history of synthetic biology and its practical application, the iGEM entry process, and the current division of labor of our team. All the participants showed great interest. To make the presentation more interesting, we also prepared a few interesting videos regarding to our team's experiments and daily work. Most participants in the meeting said that such teamwork was very exciting. This presentation we gave achieved the expected results of awareness.
Feedback：
After the presentation, we received a lot of comments from participants, and we learned their great enthusiasm for participating in iGEM. Many freshmen wanted to be a part of the next year's preparation team. They said that they would develop relevant skills for the competition and learned skills about biological experiments. We encouraged them to do that and offered them a lot of advice. And we have full confidence for the next year's competition.
At the same time, in order to satisfy the students' desire to further study synthetic biology and to promote the awareness of synthetic biology, we learned that our school has offered the course Introduction to Synthetic Biology for senior students. We believe that this course is engineering oriented and shouldn’t be limited to any specific majors within the College of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Engineering, So we are actively discussing with the college to offer this course to all students. We are looking forward to the progress. Our presentations give us all confidence to continue to participate the iGEM competition in the future.
3.3 Club Carnival
On October 19, 2019, our university launched a Club Carnival for the students, especially for the freshmen. We collaborated with the "Super Scientists" association to propaganda the iGEM competition during this carnival. A lot of students were not only curious about this competition, but also got interested in synthetic biology study. We also answered their questions in details. This activity effectively expanded the iGEM influence. Last but not least, we got blessed from many students.
3.4 WeChat & Sina MicroBlog
Overview：
WeChat is a very popular network platform to communicate with each other in China, and one of the WeChat function is to use Official Account to publish articles. At present, there are not many Official Account about synthetic biology. Weibo is another popular social networking platform competing with WeChat. Although we have held seminars and other activities to let more people know about iGEM competition and synthetic biology, we try to reach more people about those subjects. Therefore, we recorded our daily activity and published on those platforms, so that the public have a chance to understand synthetic biology in an open and multiple perspectives.
Procedure：
Our posts on WeChat Official Account emphasized on popular science including practical cases of synthetic biology and breast cancer, which is an excellent complement to our project. Besides, we made original comic strips to describe the actual synthetic biology cases, which can be better conveyed to the public reach people across by picturing important knowledge points. The main content of Weibo on the other hand emphasized on recording our daily work to give people a taste of what it was like to work on synthetic biology project.
Feedback：
The average reading volume of each article of our WeChat Official Account was 300, and readers interacted with us frequently, showing that we have a good publicity. We used Weibo to record interesting moments during the experiment or in our daily work, so that more readers could participate in our competition online. Therefore, Weibo provided a platform for interested young people to get closer to iGEM, which also inspired their enthusiasm for discussion with us.
4.Meet Up
4.1 The 3rd Nanjing Regional iGEM Exchange Conference
On May 19th, we participated in the 3rd Nanjing iGEM Exchange Conference held by China Pharmaceutical University. Several Teams from colleges and high schools attended the meeting. As a newly formed team, we learned the progress report from experienced teams and were inspired by them. This experience provided our team with new ideas in the early stage. Benefiting from this exchange, we had better idea on the team’s division of labor and the direction of the topic.
4.2 Jinlin University meetup
Our team member participated in the Jilin Meetup held in Jilin University on July 19th to 20th, 2019. Though for a short time, other teams guided us how to launch, conduct, and present an iGEM project. Besides, they also gave us some suggestions about our project, such as the selection of suitable kill switches, the accuracy of the biosensors, and the possible impact of our projects on the society.
4.3 CCiC
From August 19th to 23rd, we participated in the 6th Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC). The CCiC was hosted by the Institute of Synthetic Biology of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. A total of 70 iGEM teams from more than 60 colleges and universities across the country attended this event. As a team participating in iGEM for the first year, we cherished the opportunity to communicate with other teams. Team members from Huazhong Agricultural University, Jilin University, Jiangnan University, Sichuan University and our Mentor Xu Huandi had provided some valuable advice for our project. At the same time, the reports of the winning teams in previous years also benefited us a lot. The experiences from those days had greatly enriched our project content, which had given us a lot of new ideas, and also made us realize that the disadvantages in the project.
Most importantly, CCiC gave us a chance to participate in the competition in advance. In addition, we had made a lot of like-minded friends, sharing experience on the competitions. There was no doubt that this experience makes us happy and excited.
In order to protect the privacy and right to know of the above respondents/companies, the content of the display was permitted by the parties.