Difference between revisions of "Team:CGU Taiwan/Human Practices Education"

Education

During our visit to the Department of Children Infectious Diseases at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, the doctors commented: "accination rate in infants and newborns is very high in Taiwan. Parents follow the immunization schedule to get their children vaccinated. But vaccines excluded from the recommended immunization schedule are not widely accepted by the public. For instance, influenza vaccine is free for elderly and youth because of government funding. However, very few people volunteer to get vaccinated. This situation may be associated with the safety concern about vaccine among the public. It is a vital issue that healthcare managers devote to eliminate the apprehension of vaccine all over the world."

Doctors in TIVS said, "As time progresses, the request of vaccine safety will be higher and higher. However, people still follow expert advises most of time, since they only have little professional knowledge of vaccine."

To understand the benefits of vaccination, general knowledge of immunology is necessary. Unfortunately, not every individual in the public masters in immunology. It raises a concern that this lack of knowledge may build an obstacle for the public to accept a new kind of vaccine. Under these circumstances, we prepared a series of questionnaire to gauge the knowledge about vaccination among general public in Taiwan. Click here have a look of our questionnaire!

The result shows that half of the people get 3-4 answers correct out of 7 questions; while only 2.83% people get all the answers correct. After analyzing the scores from a total of 848 examinees, we find the average is 3.84 points. This is less than the least acceptable score set at 4.

Based on statistical outcome, most people do not fully understand the side effects of vaccination. It may partly contribute to the rising concern for vaccine safety among the public. There is also a lack of concensus that people should get influenza vaccine annually to protect themselves from flu. These two findings may explicate why influenza vaccine is not widely accepted in the residents in Taiwan.

Furthermore, most of the people disagree that the education about vaccine nowadays needs to be improved.

We conclude from our survey that the public has insufficient knowledge about vaccine. We think it may likely result from either the lack of confidence in vaccine quality or the unawareness of the significance of vaccination. We therefore engage in several activities in the hope of promoting public awareness about vaccination.

In our education part, we aim to inspire people to learn more about synthetic biology, microbiology, immunology, virology, and so on.

As a good proverb from Joshua Jung goes, "if you don't realize the value of something, then even if you have received it, you can't use it properly". We presented our project and background knowledge to the freshman in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at CGU and students at Yilan Senior High School. In Taiwan Fund for Children and Families, we talked to college students not majoring in biology-related disciplines. We also participated in the "Science Carnival," an annual exhibition in the National Taiwan Science Education Center. In this popular event, we showed the audience videos about our project. To motivate young kids, we set up workshops for them to distinguish cells, microorganisms, and viruses as well as to make tangible double helix structure of DNA. Through these hands-on experiments, they got the first glimpse of synthetic biology and understood how DNA could be manipulated in microorganisms.

Besides the outdoor activities mentioned above, we frequently write articles to document our activities and to share knowledge related to our project on our CGU iGEM Taiwan Facebook Fan Page. We have many interested followers through the Internet. To expand the audience, we also showcased our project in various popular science magazines, including PanSci, Investigator, and Scientific American. We want to inspire as many people as we can.

Also, we showed the questionnaire answers to survey participants and educate them about vaccine during the process. Here is the answer to our questionnaire, and check your answers!

After lectures, exhibition, and other activities, people became more knowledgable about our project and the general concept of vaccination. When we practiced the educational sessions, we also surveyed participants' willingness of trying Leijuvant as a vaccine adjuvant. Statistical analysis shows that approximately 60% of the people accept our product if it is proven safe and passes the clinical trials.

Are you willing to take "Leijuvant", a revolutionary choice of vaccine helper?
According to statistics, we can detect there are nearly 60% of the people supporting this action.

We fully engaged our audience through these educational sessions. In the Science Carnival, people who supported us drew beautiful, vivid, and biology-related figures on the white canvas we prepared for them. People who took pictures with us also allowed us to post them on the Fan Page. As times passed by, there are more and more followers continually tracking us. Our motto is "people who believe in us believe the better future." We truly have a sense of satisfaction and achievement with the warm support, positive feedback, and encouragement from all participants.

We share project, knowledge, and outdoor activities regarding iGEM team communication, presentation in schools or companies, daily life of team members, and etc. on the Facebook Fanpage, CGU iGEM Taiwan. We get almost 700 likes, which you must have a look!

It was honored to go back to the Yilan high school. The iGEMer who gave the speech is the alumnus of the school. The lecture described 3 topics, the profile of our university and department of biomedical science, what should a college student learn exactly in the university, and our iGEM project sharing.

To our intrigue, 23 attenders of total 39 said they accepted Leijuvant being injected into their bodies. The ratio is very close to the statistic outcome of Internet survey.

We finally thanked PH. D Mei-Man Chen for arranging this event.

It was honored to go back to the Yilan high school. The iGEMer who gave the speech is the alumnus of the school. The lecture described 3 topics, the profile of our university and department of biomedical science, what should a college student learn exactly in the university, and our iGEM project sharing.

To our intrigue, 23 attenders of total 39 said they accepted Leijuvant being injected into their bodies. The ratio is very close to the statistic outcome of Internet survey.

We finally thanked PH. D Mei-Man Chen for arranging this event.

We were lucky to join the science carnival held in National Taiwan Science Education Center in Shilin. This activity was like a kind of exhibition with the majority of elementary and junior high school students and their parents or any other passerby as our audiences. And we not only showed those who headed to our stand videos dealing with our project and motivation, but also guided them to how to distinguish the immune cells, protozoans, and viruses and teach them to make a fragment of tangible double helix structure of DNA, so that they would know it is the DNA that will be manipulated in those microorganisms in synthetic biology. What's better, people who supported us draw beautiful, vivid, and biology-related figures on the white canvas we prepared for them. And people who took pictures with us allowed us to post them on the Fan Page. We convinced that people who believe in us believe the better future. And after this activity, the likes of our Fan Page gained over 150 likes and aggregated to 650.

We hold a small popular-science lecture in Taiwan Fund for Children and Families in Tamsui. The topic is about influenza virus, flu vaccine, how to predict and prevent. The 11 audiences are from a special team which is all consisting of college students from varied departments in different schools. Thus they gather together to participate in the social issues. And since Taiwan has been experiencing peaked epidemic period of influenza, we furthermore corporate with them to share our project and make them get to know more about the reason why there is always the flu season around. And we think isn't it the exact the spirits that iGEM appeals for? That is the collaborative interdisciplinary workshop if you want to do something big and get this done. So not only can you enhance your competence, but also you will find your direction.

After that, we received positive results that they can understand what we're talking about. We thank our senior, Jane Lin, who was just from the TFCF team and helped us get the permission to TFCF from the team's leader, Miss Chang. And this is our first time for education part in public.

Happy Hour is always a big activity in our department of biomedical science. Teachers and students will come to department square to gather, talk, and eat catering, in order to make members of BS more adherent to each other. For this time, we especially launched our first concept video. It deals with our motivation and project. There is a scenario that flu H1N1 came with an outburst, and however no current vaccine can help prevent or cure. Thus researching a whole new vaccine is unavoidable and must-do mission. Hence, we thought one kind of creature can be used as a new approach of vaccine, that is Leishmania. Leishmania can be specifically recognized by the antigen presenting cells, so if interested antigen is expressed inside the body of Leishmania, antigen could be detected very soon. And antigen will be cloned in the biobrick which we would standardize for iGEM official.

We thanked Dr. Sebastian D. Fugmann, Dr. Shu-Yuan Yang, Dr. Sheng-Chieh Hsu, Dr. Ming-Chih Lai, and Dr. Sze-Cheng John Lo for offering this opportunity.