Team:UCopenhagen/Public Engagement
An integral priority of Ovulaid has been to engage and educate our peers and also ourselves through the interaction. Ovulaid reached out to the women we want to help and collected testimonials through a large quantitative survey and qualitative in-depth interviews, all facilitated by wide outreach through social media and influencers. The team has been featured in international newspapers such as The Guardian as well as been engaged in the ongoing public Danish debate on GMO-technologies. Ovulaid has also been presented by the teams at multiple events, many for high school students with a passion for STEM, and going on, the team is working with Biotech Academy on making a synthetic biology case to be used in high school labs.
Listening to women
Women’s opinions are the single determining factor for the possible success of Ovulaid. The inspiration and purpose of Ovulaid is to give women proper solutions and ease their burdens with innovative femtech.
Quantitative market analysis and methodology
It does not make sense to work on something if there is no interest and need for it. In order to get women’s feedback on the Ovulaid chewing gum and to analyse the market of fertility and ovulation tests we made a quantitative market analysis by conducting a survey and analyzing the results. To help collect a significant and unbiased amount of answers we spread the questionnaire through social media channels (Facebook and Instagram), and besides organic spread we also ‘boosted’ the questionnaire to specifically reach women internationally from ages 25-30. We targeted specific women’s fora and influencers sympatical to our cause and requested their help in spreading the questionnaire, and UK Comedy “The Scummy Mommies”, Hungarian actress Szabo Kitti, and Hungarian sports star Dr. Zsuzs Csisztu agreed to share the survey, resulting in a large increase in answers.
As a result Ovulaid received 1529 answers to the questionnaire from 42 different countries from all over the world, with a vast majority of participants from Eastern-Europe.
Picture 1: Left picture: Scummy Mommies' instagram post about our project. Top right: Anasta Sidorova's (influencer, that speaks about hormonal health) instagram post about our project. Down right: Dr. Zsuzs Csisztu's instagram post about our project.
Demographics and relevance
The majority of the participants were between 25-30 years old and wanted to get pregnant in the near future. The average age for women to have their first baby is in the US 26,3 years1, and the information obtained from the survey was therefore relevant, demographically speaking. An additional relevant trend was that 73% and 71% of women in between ages 31-35 and 36+, respectively, also wanted to get pregnant in the near future. Statistics show that the average age of women wanting to conceive varies greatly based on her marital status, education level, and economic status. Women that are married, well educated, and live in areas with higher economic status tend to have their children later in life1.
Picture 2: Showing the numbers of answers from our quantitative market analysis.
Figure 1 - Distribution of the participants from our quantitative market analysis
Figure 2 - Graph comparing ages to the wish of getting pregnant in the near future
Existing ovulation tests are not appreciated by women already mindful of their cycles
56% of the women that want to get pregnant in the near future do not use any means to identify or monitor their ovulation (Figure 4). We asked the 56% why they do not track their ovulation and the dominant answer with a frequency of 24,6% is, that they don’t like the existing methods. The existing ovulation tests are not appreciated by these women (Figure 5).
Figure 4 - Correlation between the wish to become pregnant and the use of ovulation tests
Figure 5 - Reasons why women do not track their ovulation.
From Figure 5 we also see that the second most frequent answer, with 18,40%, is that women do not know that they should track their ovulation. This result reflects the knowledge we both received from talking to different fertility experts (Bjarne B. Christensen, Valerias Landis and Prof. Lone Schmidt - Click here). Many women simply do not have sufficient knowledge regarding their own fertility - they do not know when they can conceive, when they are ovulating, and why ovulation is so important for fertility, and this ignorance is already well documented3,4 and it further establishes the need for fertility awareness and proper education on family planning in terms of fertility.
Women primarily use counting as a method
From Figure 4 it can be seen that 40% of the women that want to get pregnant are tracking their ovulation. We then asked these women how they tracked their ovulation (Figure 6) and the dominant method is to simply calculate their expected ovulation date from their menstrual cycle. This method is imprecise, since 80% of the women asked have irregular cycles based on their menstruation14 and even if the remaining 20% have regular menstruations, their ovulations may not be so regular as to be based on simple counting of days.
Figure 6 - How women track their ovulation. For this question, it was possible to tick off multiple answers.
Existing ovulation tracking methods are imprecise and uncomfortable
For the 24,6% of women that expressed unhappiness with their existing method of choice for tracking ovulation, we asked them to elaborate their issues. In summary existing options were too expensive, uncomfortable, or not precise enough as can be seen in Figures 9-11, and of these; first precision, and then comfort, are the factors with the greatest possibility of improvement.
Figure 7 - Women’s issues with the basal body temperature method (women could tick of multiple answers for this question). Figure 8 - Women’s issues with the ‘calculation from the menstrual cycle’ method (women could tick of multiple answers for this question). Figure 9 - Women’s issues with examining their my cervical mucus (women could tick of multiple answers for this question). Figure 10 - Women’s issues with the ovulation tests (women could tick of multiple answers for this question). Figure 11 - Women’s issues with using apps (women could tick of multiple answers for this question).
Qualitative analysis: methodology
In-depth interviews (IDI’s) are a method for qualitative research. An in-depth interview is a discovery oriented method to obtain detailed information about a topic from a stakeholder, minimizing the constraints of e.g. a survey where the results are predetermined by the available answers. Infertility and subfertility are also topics that are highly sensitive in nature, so we judged that IDI’s were a superior method to other qualitative research methods, such as focus group interviews which we also considered, as the privacy of the IDI’s makes it easier to create and control a safe space for the woman, and would be more comfortable for the women involved. We conducted 15 in-depth interviews with women that had been facing fertility issue. To get a bigger perspective on our project the interview where done for 10 Hungarian women and 5 Danish women. We planned the sampling strategy and constructed an interview guide with the help from market researcher, Erik Arvid Hosszu. He also trained our team members in conducting the interviews, as the skill of the interviewer is paramount but since their training were limited this could be a source of uncertainty in the results, that we should not overlook. Notes from the meeting can be seen here, click here.)
Qualitative analysis results
The results from the in-depth interviews showed that women are not happy with the current methods. Most of the women do not like the existing tests, because the joy and the intimity of their sexual intercourse is overshadowed by the burden that stems from the usage of these inconvenient tests. What women really liked about Ovulaid was that chewing a gum would not change their natural habits, furthermore our solution is not sterile compared to all the other existing tests on the market. The women also stated that most of the methods are imprecise, especially for women with irregular menstrual cycles. A great advantage of our gum is that it gives a complete picture of their hormonal changes. As a result, they can easily understand their body moreover Ovulaid can indicate problems concerning their health. Those interviewed women who are going through fertility treatment even thought that neither hormone injections nor the in vitro fertilization are “natural” - so using a genetically modified yeast would not frighten them. The wish of getting pregnant is so big that they are ready to do everything in order to get pregnant.
90% of women would like to use Ovulaid
After having established that there indeed was a need for novel ovulation testing methods we turned to our idea Ovulaid. Would women want to use this, even if it contains a GMO? We asked the women if they would try Ovulaid - 96% of the women wanted to. We told the women that our chewing gum contained baker yeast and 95% of them still wanted to try our product. We then told them that our chewing gum contains GMO, and asked the women if they were still interested in using our product, and we were shocked by the results: 90% of the women would like to try Ovulaid - well informed of the GM-technology it is based on.
Figure 12 - Percentage of women that want to try Ovulaid chewing gum. Figure 13 - Percentage of women that want to try Ovulaid chewing gum after we told them that it contains baker’s yeast. Figure 14 Percentage of women that want to try Ovulaid chewing gum after we told them that it is GMO based.
Further sparking debate and collecting data, we engaged the public by creating a survey concerning perception and opinions on GMO in collaboration with iGEM teams Oxford and Leiden5. Read more about the collaboration here.
From social media to The Guardian
As a direct result of our active media strategy the story of the Ovulaid team was so lucky to be picked up by the british newspaper The Guardian. Journalist Helen Russel, a mother with a personal experience with infertility, were inspired by our project, our drive, and the fact that we are a team of scientists (60% women) passionate about innovative solutions for women’s health. Helen wrote an exciting and sincere article about Ovulaid, women in science, and iGEM.
Picture 3: Our team meeting Helen Russell, british journalist for The Guardian Upside and bestselling author.
Picture 4: The Guardian article found online.
Following the article, our story blew up and went viral. English, Spanish, German, French, Swiss, and Telugu papers, radioshows and more posted similar stories, clearly inspired but Helen’s article in The Guardian. Articles were found in papers like e.g. RTL, 20 Minuten, News Medical and many more!
Picture 5: Only just a handfull of the articles found online about Ovulaid
In summary we have been very fortunate and can with certainty conclude that women and the world is ready for Ovulaid. We are deeply humbled and thankful. No matter how we fare in the iGEM competition in general, all the positivity and all the support we have received from so many women from all over the world is enough for us.
Entering the public Danish debate on GM-technologies
Besides the international media adventures, the team has also been nationally engaged in the public Danish debate on GMO-technologies. On the 25th of September four of our team members were featured in one of the most well renowned national Danish newspapers Dagbladet Information6 with a weekly average of 181.000 readers in 20197. Our team members wrote an article contributing to the ongoing debate on GMO in Denmark8. The debate piece was formed as an answer to an article that the Danish environmental movement organisation “NOAH”9 had published in the same paper on the 19th of September10. NOAH’s opinion piece encouraged increased scepticism towards how Danish media covers GMO-technologies and criticized the media for being uncritical and criticized how GM crops are assessed legally in Denmark. In our response piece, we agreed with NOAH that the media should be critical and strive to limit bias, and like NOAH, we are also sceptical regarding current European risks assessments, but not because they are too slack, as NOAH claims.
Picture 5: From left Selma, Iben, Signe and Benedicte with our article in Dagbladet Information.
We believe that European assessments of GM-technologies is indeed lacking, but this is primarily due to the unequal market access caused by the very high costs of such assessments, effectively blocking GM innovation from all but very large companies11. As the legal scholar Jakob Wested stressed, the largest issue in Europe’s legal stance against GM-technologies is the limitation on incremental innovation, which is necessary if we want to reach all the possible and safe synthetic biology solutions that could better the world. Our biggest concern is that the potential benefits of the technology will be missed because of fear for the possible risks.
Social Media
Ovulaid has been consequently active on social media, especially Facebook and Instagram. The team has used these platforms to reach and engage people by posting and sharing content regarding Ovulaid’s progress, iGEM and synthetic biology in general. An example is our quiz12 ‘GMO: Fact or Fiction?’ concerning GMO, an introduction video of our project, that has been viewed by more than 15000 people (click here to watch) and a more science based video about our project (click here to watch).
Picture 1: Our Instagram page.
Picture 2: Our activity on our Facebook page.
Picture 3: Our activity on our Facebook page.
Picture 4: Our activity on our Facebook page.
Picture 5: Our activity on our Facebook page.
Talks and more
When you have a fun project such as Ovulaid you have to share it. We have engaged and educated high school students by presenting our project at different talked about iGEM at different events. We have been sincerely surprised and pleased with our younger peers, and we are all round impressed by how well informed and reflected high schoolers are these days!
Biology Inspiration Days at the Mols Laboratory:
The Mols Laboratory is an institute under Aarhus University that conducts research on rewilding amongst other topics. On the 6th and 7th of October, the Danish Biology Olympiad held Inspiration Days for high school students and 21 students attended from approximately 20 different high schools. During the two days the students listened to talks about biology - one of which was Claudia’s talk on iGEM and synthetic biology. All of the students were amazed at how many processes occurred in a cell, and how they could be utilized by synthetic biology to solve real-world problems. Later they also heard talks about insects, rewilding, and even went out into the rewilding habitat owned by Mols Laboratory where they observed beetles in excrement from wild cows. Thank you to the board of the Danish Biology Olympiad, Kirsten and Birthe, for arranging the inspiration days, and thank you to Mols Laboratory for hosting us.
Picture 6: The students learning about beetles living in excrements.
Picture 7: Claudia presenting about synthetic biology and iGEM.
Picture 8: Students listening attentively to Claudia.
UNF biotech camp:
Biotech Camp is a science camp for highschool students with a budding interest in Biotechnology. On Thursday the 25th of July our team members Hitesh and Benedicte were delighted to present our project and discuss fertility issues, menstrual cycle tracking, and biosensors with extremely bright and attentive highschool students from all over Denmark together with the Biobuilders from DTU and the SDU iGEM team. The students astounded us, both with their proficiency for discussing very scientific subjects in English, but mostly with their very sharp questions about survivability, bioavailability, data security etc. mirroring what several field experts have also asked. In summary, we were grateful for the opportunity to spend time with our younger peers and applaud the UNF biotech camp organizers for facilitating this awesome afternoon.
Picture 9: From left: Hitesh (UCPH), Markus (DTU), Helena (DTU), Mikkel (DTU), Jakob (SDU), Annemette (SDU) and Benedicte
Molecular Biomedicine Symposium:
The UCopenhagen team was invited to give a presentation on Sunday May 19th, at the annual symposium for the students of the Molecular Biomedicine program at the University of Copenhagen. The symposium is an opportunity for students to hear about the Bachelor’s and Master’s projects currently being carried out by other students in the programme. This was a great opportunity for the team to present Ovulaid, and iGEM in general, to our peers. Our team members Iben and Noël carried out the presentation, to which the audience responded with a lot of interest. After the presentation, the audience had some good and very critical questions, mainly about safety, marketing, and GMO concerns. These are questions that we now have addressed, and we want to thank the organizers for the opportunity to speak at this occasion.
Picture 10: From left: Noël and Iben presenting at the Symposium
Biotech Academy Camp:
On the 15th of October two of our team members Anett and Signe went to Biotech Academy’s Camp. The camp was hosted by Biotech Academy and was a science camp for ambitious highschool student with a passion for biology and biotechnology. Together with Biobuilders from DTU our team members presented about iGEM and our projects. The students were very interested in iGEM, and in Ovulaid. After the presentation we discussed about fertility, female health, the menstrual cycle and the hormonal cycle with the students, and especially some of the female students were very interested and wanted to discuss further. We felt very inspired from the discussion and went home and educated ourselves even more on the relationship between hormones, menstrual cycle and female health. Our team members had a lot of fun and were very happy about this opportunity.
Picture 11: From left: Louise (DTU), Mikkel (DTU), Anett (UCPH) and Signe (UCPH) answering questions from the students
Biotech Academy:
Besides being speakers at the Biotech Academy Camp, we also collaborated on making a synthetic biology case to be used in high school labs.
At the BioBrick tutorial weekend, hosted by DTU BioBuilders, we meet Chrysillis Judy Magaard Polhaus, a former iGEMer (2017, DTU). Today, she works at Biotech Academy, a danish company run by DTU students, making free teaching material for high schools and elementary schools students.
We reached out to Chrysillis and had several meetings to get her advice on successful Human Practice and ultimately defining our collaboration: a Biosensor case for high schools.
For a full account of meetings and progress check the Human Practice appendix.
We will continue this collaboration even after the iGEM finals. We learned that, when working with high school students there are LOTS of regulations in Denmark, which understandably takes time to process.
We are therefore happily continuing our Biotech Academy case after the Giant Jamboree.
Flavorful tasting session with teenagers:13
On the 25th of September the team asked a group of the most picky eaters out there, teenagers, what they think of yeast flavored chewing gum - of course with a non-GM storebought baker’s yeast.
Afterwards the teens were allowed to play around with different aromas and find the best taste combinations with yeasty gum.
The winners were: apple, peppermint, and raspberry.
The absolute loser was toffee flavored yeast gum (Yuck!)
Picture 12: The yeast, chewing gum and the aromas used for the taste test
Picture 13: The teenager in the middel of mixing, playing and trying out different flavors
Picture 14: The aroma of choice is added
Picture 15: The yeast and chewing gum base are mixed
This taste test was great fun and allowed us to talk, especially with the teenage girls, about hormonal health, period tracking and even some basic principles of synthetic biology.
Flyer
Before the summer began and our full-time iGEM season was started the communication group of our team worked on a flyer. The content of the flyer was describing Ovulaid in an easy and fun way with a few words and a cartoon. We then brought our flyer along with us for all the places we went during the summer e.g. different meetups, HP meetings and in our own daily lives. The content was easy and fun as we wanted everybody to understand what we were doing, and it was a huge help and conversationstarter!
Appendix - Click the arrows to see the meetings.
Biotech Academy: Biosensor case
At the BioBrick tutorial weekend, hosted by DTU BioBuilders, we meet Chrysillis Judy Magaard Polhaus, a former iGEMer (2017, DTU). Today, she works at Biotech Academy, a danish company run by DTU students, making free teaching material for high schools and elementary schools students.
We reached out to Chrysillis and had several meetings to get her advice on successful Human Practice and ultimately defining our collaboration: a Biosensor case for high schools. We reached out to her after the meetup as we wanted to have a talk about seeking funding, their project in 2017, and her current work with Biotech Academy. We agreed on having a meeting soon.
On monday the 6th of May we had a meeting with Chrysillis.
The meeting was in a very early stage of the project, where we were still brainstorming our human practices projects. She gave us great input on how to get started, and what to think about, moving forward with different human practices projects.
She asked us on the behalf of Biotech Academy, if we would like to cooperate with them on a case for high school students about our biosensor. This is important for high school students on a scientific track to learn about synthetic biology, and we would love to help developing educational tools for high school students.
At the first meeting we agreed on doing the case at the end of the summer. After a long and productive summer we had the second meeting with Biotech Academy on Wednesday the 14th of August. At this meeting both Chrysillis and Viktor Hesselberg-Thomsen from the company joined. We all agreed on an idea for a case that could be used for high school students and would be connected to our project. Both us but also Biotech Academy had to do some work to see if this could be feasible.
We prepared the foundation of the case, but since there are lots of regulations when working with high school students, we were not able to finalize it before the Giant Jamboree.
We therefore decided on a team that would carry one the case with Biotech Academy, as this would be a fun and meaningful task to do together post iGEM season.
References
1. The Balance (2019). What Is the Average Age to Have a Baby in the U.S [online]. Available at: https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-the-average-age-to-have-a-baby-in-the-u-s-4582455 [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019]. 2. Everyday Health. The Facts About Irregular Periods (2019). [online]. Available at: https://www.everydayhealth.com/pms/irregular-periods.aspx [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 3. Fiona Clancy, Lesley Foster, Giulia Zanzi, Celine Mollard, Sarah Johnson (2018). Five Country Study of women’s attitudes and knowledge regarding fertility [online]. Available at: https://www.clearblue.com/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/ESHRE_2019_Poster_P499.pdf?fbclid=IwAR10IlBB53wW9exQ1Wcx9o1qVjmRt2duIaJRkmeVJpdfqGF2n66QSkDFaIs [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 4. SR Johanson, L Foster, JE Ellis. Women's knowledge regarding ovulation and most likely time of conception [online]. Available at: https://www.clearblue.com/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/hcpro/publications/HCP_Publications/Articles-FertilityAndOvulation/WomensKnowledgeRegardingOvulation.pdf?fbclid=IwAR39E4s42BufTG0BuRZ-BrW-dZYA_4R3UwFd-u89JvYAEClzRrEQgIJdVLg [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 5. https://oxfordigem.typeform.com/to/RtF3gy?fbclid=IwAR3QEq7B-AGfY-4UksLAA3f5JJPrj0OnyapEux2psGxnRmyXNOFtXBeZ39Y 6. MediaVejviseren (2019). Danske aviser Danmark.[online]. Available at: https://mediavejviseren.dk/aviser/danske-aviser-danmark.htm [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 7. Kantar Gallup (2019. Index Danmark/Gallup 1. halvår 2019. [online]. Available at: https://webtest.kantargallup.dk/storage/reports/September2019/mZetWKnonsj89X2WaMpV.pdf [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 8. Information (2019). Vi må ikke gå glip af GMO-teknologiens enorme potentiale af frygt for mulige risici. [online]. Available at: https://www.information.dk/debat/2019/09/maa-gaa-glip-gmo-teknologiens-enorme-potentiale-frygt-mulige-risici?fbclid=IwAR2NiqMrb0rCBYOKmAk09YBPSGJeE8Tzka0se7lZjJy6g50lZJZOS0wy_5U [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 9. NOAH. [online]. Available at: https://www.noah.dk [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 10. Information (2019). Danske medier er for ukritiske over for ny GMO-teknologi. [online]. Available at: https://www.information.dk/debat/2019/09/danske-medier-ukritiske-ny-gmo-teknologi [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 11. Det Etiske Råd (2019). GMO og etik i en ny tid. [online]. Available at: http://www.etiskraad.dk/etiske-temaer/natur-klima-og-foedevarer/publikationer/gmo-og-etik-i-en-ny-tid-2019 [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 12. https://www.riddle.com/showcase/203657/quiz?fbclid=IwAR31ciwS9wSmoqnVzftmMJHc4qpM83qBpDrzXRzkcOdvXTwirRYjL3CKBgc 13. Pumpestationen. [online]. Available at: https://www.pumpestationen.dk/ [Accessed 19 Oct. 2019] 14. Karout, N., Hawai, S. and Altuwaijri, S. (2012). Prevalence and pattern of menstrual disorders among Lebanese nursing students. Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 18(4), pp.346-352.
About Us
We are Ovulaid: a team of 13 students from the University of Copenhagen working on a novel ovulation detection system, using synthetic biology.
Keep in Touch
iGEM Team Copenhagen
iGEM_Copenhagen
iGEM_Copenhagen
UCPH.IGEM2019@gmail.com
Address
University of Copenhagen
Thorvaldsensvej 40, Frederiksberg C
Denmark
