Team:ZJU-China/Public Engagement
Preliminary work
We conducted a questionnaire survey on the public understanding of HPV, HPV vaccine and Cervical Cancer in Zhejiang Province, China. From the results, we can conclude that although most women understand the harmfulness of HPV and the necessity to get HPV vaccine, only few of them do HPV infection examinations regularly. The results of the questionnaire also show that many of them have misunderstanding of HPV. After knowing these conditions, we decided to launch a more effective way to popular science.
HPV Knowledge × Pad
We have had several in-depth discussions with Hangzhou Little Sister Hygiene Products Co., Ltd. In order to educate the public with more knowledge about HPV and Cervical Cancer, we cooperated for a new series of pad.
We put a 5*5 cm card in each pack of pads, which contains knowledge about HPV or Cervical Cancer, we picked up the most important and most relevant knowledge, and interpreted them in a vivid and understandable way. We hope this small card can enable women to have access to some useful knowledge to protect them away from HPV every month. At the same time, we designed an HPV knowledge manual to support the production of more small cards.
More attempts at education
When we conducted an offline survey on campus, we found that college students' understanding of HPV was not enough. The college students are at the golden age for HPV vaccination, but the vaccination rate was not high.
We reached a cooperation with the school management department. In the location of the largest traffic in the dormitory area of Zhejiang University, information about iGEM and HPV were publicized on the big screen, attracting the attention of many college students every day.
Design little games for children
In the low-carbon science and technology museum in Hangzhou, we designed three games related to synthetic biology for children aged 6-12, namely “Candy DNA”, “Cell Engineer”, and “Logic Gate”, and guided and played these games with them.
(1) Candy DNA:
We used four different colors of soft candy to represent four bases, a hawthorn candy to represent the skeleton of DNA, a toothpick to represent hydrogen bonds, and guiding children to build DNA by the candy materials. We provided children with hygienic tablecloths and gloves. Children could enjoy their candy DNA after they were finished building.
(2) Cell Engineer:
We provided four cell model templates for children, plant, animal, bacterial and HPV. After we briefly introduced the cell structure for the children, the children created their own cells and explained them cell design to us.
(3) Logic Gate:
The "and, or, not" logic are very important ideas in synthetic biology. What can we do to let children understand these three logics and the symbols?
We designed a small game of "Angels and Demons". The children needed to choose different logics to deal with the questions we gave, so that the angels could pass the final door, and lock the demon behind. This game had greatly aroused the interest of children, even parents joined us.
iGEM X high school
In the event of the iGEM X high school's meetup, not only a large number of high school teams and several invited university teams participated, we also invited some high school students and families interested in iGEM to join us.
We have specially prepared materials about synthetic biology for these non-participating high-school students and families to help them understand the core synthetic biology ideas and to make it easier to understand other team projects.
Explore more education with red cross
The Red Cross Society of Zhejiang University is a student organization that regularly conducts science-based activities for university-level college students for HIV education. As a disease that is harmless, but more easily transmitted than HIV, HPV is also indispensable for the education of college students.
We proposed to the Zhejiang Red Cross Society for education about HPV, and reached a cooperation with the Red Cross, jointly launched the HPV publicity science activities of college students, and received very good feedback. The Red Cross said that HPV's popular science activities will be planned every year in the future.
