In the era of rapid development of the Internet, most people solve most problems in life through electronic products and learn knowledge through the Internet. Taking this into account, we set up accounts of our team on short video platforms and social platforms, which are also popular media at present. The aim is to use the short video platform to educate the public about the basic knowledge of triple-negative breast cancer and prevention methods. In addition, we also organized a science outreach event aimed at children in the community.
Community Science---Cells and Cancer Cells
We visited the community to conduct a science outreach activity aimed at children aged around 7-10. In this event, we aimed to educate children about the fundamental concepts of cells and cancer cells, and how to prevent and treat cancer, fostering an early understanding of these crucial topics.
Throughout a person's life, cells usually grow and divide as needed. They are very large, about trillions of them. When cells become abnormal or old, they usually die. Cancer begins when something goes wrong in this process, and the cells in the body keep producing new ones while the old or abnormal ones don't die when they should. When cancer cells grow out of control, they crowd out normal cells. This can make it difficult for the human body to work properly. Because cancer cells can have a direct impact on human life, it is our main goal in this project to make more people aware of cells and cancer cells and to bring attention to them.
Given the increasing incidence of cancer nowadays, we believe that instilling good habits from a young age is key to reducing cancer rates. We are presenting it as a community interactive science project, targeting children living in Shanghai, with an average age of around 7 years old.
The gain for the children in this science popularization is that they gained knowledge that they haven't learned in school yet, and understand more about how cancer arises, and the usual gain for our team is that we were able to learn about the ideas of different groups of people, and the subsequent improvement of products related to the treatment of cancer. Because most of our research drugs only focus on adults more on adult women.
This popularization of the science has given the children sufficient awareness of daily precautions, so that they can pay more attention to their own health in their daily life, such as work, rest, and diet. It also made the children more interested in biology, so that they may be able to specialize in biology in the future and contribute to the future of medical care. At the same time, the children can also popularize the subject for their family members, so that more and more people can understand and prevent cancer.
Figure 9a&b
TikTok
Following the publication of a questionnaire on public awareness of triple-negative breast cancer, we concluded from the results that triple-negative breast cancer is not widely understood by the public. So we decided to launch a series of public awareness campaigns on triple-negative breast cancer before promoting the product. We chose Douyin because it is a platform with a large number and range of audiences and quick exposure. We created the team's account on TikTok, "Spy in Crowd," and released four videos promoting our team and the IGEM competition, synthetic biology, triple-negative breast cancer, and its treatment, medical and preventive methods. In making the video, we chose to keep the content as simple and accessible as possible, while keeping it information-intensive to accommodate the TikTok audience's quick browsing.
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WeChat official account
Social platforms are also used by people to chat and make friends. We can publicize our knowledge through WeChat public accounts, which will be closer to people's lives. At the same time, our team also uses this platform to carry out online education.
For example, if a WeChat user sees our article and finds it valuable, he may choose to share it with his friends and family or directly in the moment. This phenomenon allows more people to understand triple-negative breast cancer, know how to prevent it and improve public health awareness.
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Through the use of the Internet, our popular science video’s click rate and exposure rate continue to rise. More people can see us and learn about us. Nearly 1,000 people have watched our video, which is a good way to carry out online education. It can promote people's communication and learning, and let people take the initiative to share with people around them. Using the Internet to publicize our knowledge is of great benefit to both the masses and our team. It is worth learning from all of us to carry out education in the form of "we media", the content does not need to be too complicated, mainly for the ordinary people, the most important point is that it can get a large number of clicks in a short time, so as to thoroughly carry out publicity and education.
Our team has created several education materials and tools to facilitate our education activities. Also, these materials could be an good tool for promoting our team and project. Here are some examples that we made:
Poster
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Education Slides
Figure 13a&b
We conducted both online and offline education outreach and promotional activities. Whether within online communities or local communities, we received positive responses. Throughout this process, we have been continuously enhancing our understanding of breast cancer and the meaning of education.