Team:NCKU Tainan/Partnership
Overview
Many things cannot be accomplished by one person alone because everyone has a limited set of abilities. However, with cooperation, people can reduce working time and accomplish things more efficiently. Through partnership, people can cover each other's backs. In these turbulent times, everyone's strength is needed to work together to achieve goals; this is especially true for iGEM.
Partnership with iGEM CSMU Taiwan team
This year, iGEM CSMU Taiwan and us are both working on projects related to human health - oral cancer and glaucoma, respectively. When conversing with them, we realized we encountered the same obstacle: lack of awareness - many people are ignorant of these diseases. But, when members of the public are aware of a disease and its signs, they are more likely to take steps or go to healthcare facilities for check-ups to prevent it from happening to them.
When it comes to public health, lack of awareness proves to be an even more serious problem. This lack of knowledge is due to the lack of information, inaccessibility or inaccuracy, which is often made more complicated by cultural taboos, misconceptions and fears - discouraging people from taking preventive measures or seeing doctors. Lack of awareness is not only dangerous in terms of worsening health outcomes, it can also be divisive in society and can affect quality of life. For example, in the current pandemic situation, the government requires people to wear masks to help prevent the spread of the virus. However, we soon faced the challenge of an overabundance of information related to the virus. Some of this information may be false and potentially harmful. Inaccurate information spreads widely and at speed, making it more difficult for the public to identify verified facts and advice from trusted sources, such as their local health authority or WHO.
In order to solve this problem, iGEM NCKU Tainan and iGEM CSMU Taiwan decided to work together, with them taking head when it comes to artistic design and us taking care of all the written materials. Not only did we want to spread knowledge related to glaucoma and oral cancer, we also wanted to bring more public health knowledge to the public, bringing people one step closer to better health. In the beginning, our two teams only hoped to make good use of our connections to release the correct information about glaucoma and oral cancer to the public, but after some discussion, we considered inviting all iGEM teams to participate. The knowledge of our two teams is limited, but, if more people participate, we can share even more knowledge on different topics.
Therefore, with the efforts of iGEM NCKU Tainan 2020 and iGEM CSMU Taiwan, we established I’ve Gotta PhD.
I’ve Gotta PhD
In the beginning, we wanted to launch a website. However, considering there’s no web-developer in our team, it will take a long time and effort to establish the website. Thus, we decided to use Facebook, which has 2.5 billion users around the world and easy fan-page establishment, as the platform for our I've Gotta PhD. At the same time, we came up with seven topics that are highly related to public health after consulting UN’s guidelines on the third and fourth SDGs, which are Good Health and Well-being, and quality education. In early August, we started to promote our event through iGEM newsletter, Instagram, Facebook and email. Then, we opened submission from any interested teams. Teams can check the guidelines for these topics and select which they want to work on. Any kind of submissions are welcome, no matter they are articles, posters or videos.
Guidelines of seven topics
Science communication
Basic health care
Mental health
Break racism and discrimination
Research
Healthcare organization
Policy
Effective communication, better science. As future scientists, it is essential to know how to communicate with our audiences. We believe science communication is the key to create a better world. Especially in this era of fake news, it is our responsibility to let society know the truth. Also, there are various science controversies, for example the views on GMOs. We encourage you to think of a way to make science more understandable to the world.
Health has always been a priority throughout our lives. Furthermore, it is a fundamental right for a human being. However, there are a lot of people that still lack basic health care knowledge. Here, we invite you to share any health care information that you know. It could be anything, such as basic eye care, prevention, health insurance, and many more!
During this pandemic period, there are significant changes in our daily lives. Social distancing can make people feel lonely or isolated, in addition to the fear and anxiety of this pandemic. It may affect our mental health. As we all know, mental health is a critical matter in our lives. But, there are still many unanswered questions about mental health. How to support someone with a mental health problem? Does mental health affect physical health or physical health causes mental health problems? Mental illness is also an important issue. By sharing information or your stories or thoughts and educating people on mental health, it can help to raise mental health awareness.
Despite the gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, discrimination can happen anytime, anywhere. For example, discrimination in healthcare services because of race or certain disability. Some serious discrimination even harm one’s physical or mental health. For example, many Asians in the world suffer from verbal or even physical attacks during this-year pandemic. Why do you think this still happens? And what can we do to speak up against it? Come and share your thoughts on it!
In a research project, one of the early steps is to find and read some scientific papers related to the project. For example, take pollution as the research project. First, we need to understand what are the major causes and the current solution for it. Then, what are the better techniques to solve this problem? Also, wouldn't it be cool if society can know it too? So we welcome you to share any scientific papers, your research project, and the technique that you want the world to know
Through health organizations, people get accurate, detailed information and access to health without difficulty. It is very beneficial for us, and we can learn a lot of things from those organizations. Let's share any information you know about global or local organizations. Moreover, we invite you to think beyond that. What are their roles in this modern time? How does it influence our views on various fields, such as politics or economics?
Science and technology has advanced at a great speed, and has continued to revolve around our daily lives. But how are these technologies evaluated and regulated? Here, you can share any knowledge or arguments about current policies. Take GMOs for example - should people know who and how GMOs are regulated? Moreover, do the current policies need improvements? Are there any ethical concerns when it comes to these policies? Share your thoughts to everyone!
Promotion
In order to promote I’ve Gotta PhD, not only did we request iGEM to announce our collaboration on iGEM’s August Newsletter, iGEM collaboration page and iGEM 2020 competition Facebook page, but we also utilized email, Facebook, Instagram to promote I’ve Gotta PhD. In addition, we also promoted I’ve Gotta PhD during the iGEM Taiwan Meet-up Conference.
Work demonstration & appreciation for participation
After our announcement and promotion, many teams around the world contacted us to ask more information about I’ve Gotta PhD. From August to October, we've received 13 submissions from 10 different iGEM teams all over the world. We started posting from September and published all submissions with a frequency of two or three posts every week. To thank all teams that participate in this event, we designed certificates for them to prove and appreciate their efforts and contribution to bringing people one step closer to better health.
See all submissions created by the participating iGEM teams below or in I've gotta PhD Facebook fan page:
I've Gotta PhD Participants
iGEM Panel Discussion
With I’ve Gotta PhD, we successfully conveyed much public health information to the public. We hoped that through our page, we are able to help contribute to the third and fourth SDG. However, we are still wondering whether there are other methods to push the movement of SDGs. iGEM NCKU Tainan and iGEM CSMU Taiwan invited five iGEM teams in Taiwan to have a virtual panel discussion, which was aimed at exchanging ideas about how to contribute to SDGs.
SDGs expert
We were greatly honored to invite Professor Shih-Fong Chiou to give a 30 minutes lecture about SDGs. Shih-Fong Chiou is a professor in College X, the newest college in National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). College X aims at educating next generation talents and solving future problems, which is a platform for transdisciplinary education, research, and outreach. To link up with the world, SDGs are one the parts they are working on. With the amount of experience about SDGs projects, Professor Shih-Fong Chiou led us to understand the origin and core idea of SDGs and showed us the wideness about the range of SDGs, there could be a lot of ways to achieve SDGs.
With his help, we had a clearer view of planning events for SDGs. According to the target SDGs we chose, he showed us some cases from the Taiwan Government, organization and College X about 3th, 4th and 6th SDGs. With these examples, he not only discussed the pros and cons of these events, but also taught us how to think about issues of SDGs from different perspectives.
SDGs panel discussion
After the detailed guidance of Professor Shih-Fong Chiou, we were able to move to Panel discussion. Before we moved into this part, we asked other teams to type down three questions they want to discuss about their target SDGs. This way, other teams could follow their short introduction, which was easier to understand and memorize. Next, we divided five teams into two groups, each group would have a present team who would have a brief introduction about their SDGs, question, and one or two listening teams who would talk about their thoughts or ideas about these questions. In the end, every team integrated all advice from other teams and presented the results.
Success and benefit of the partnership
Through I’ve Gotta PhD, we are able to establish a solid channel to help teams that collaborate with us to share their knowledge to a wider audience.
We received a lot of ideas from the panel discussion and understood more about 3rd and 4th SDGs.
Future
I’ve Gotta PhD is a good start to establishing a platform for correct public health information. However, we believe there are more to be done to continue raising public awareness of public health and contributing to the SDGs. In the future, we hope to invite more experts and interested parties to help publish and promote I’ve Gotta PhD. We hope to eventually establish I’ve Gotta PhD as a leading platform for public health education.
Image display
