Introduction

Phaccine and the SDGs

The United Nations stated on their official SDGs website, saying: " The world is off-track to achieve health-related SDGs. Progress has been uneven, both between and within countries. There’s a 31-year gap between the countries with the shortest and longest life expectancies. And while some countries have made impressive gains, national averages hide that many are being left behind. Multisectoral, rights-based and gender-sensitive approaches are essential to address inequalities and to build good health for all."

Since the outbreak of covid-19, the vaccination rate has become a very important issue in society. However, there are many people who are afraid of injections or fainting, which prevents them from being vaccinated. So, we decided to develop an oral vaccine. This vaccine is not restricted to any age, meaning that everyone can take our product. And our team is also committed to promoting this vaccine everywhere, so that everyone who is afraid to vaccinate can take the vaccine with confidence. At the same time, our vaccine also meets the third goal of SDGs-Good Health and Well-being.

Background

In 2015, the United Nations announced the "2030 Sustainable Development Goals" (SDGs). The SDGs contain 17 core goals, including 169 sub-goals and 230 indicators, which guide the world to work together to achieve sustainable development. Since the past few years, the world has been affected by COVID-19, and Taiwan is no exception. It is often seen in the news that there are side effects and deaths after vaccination, which makes many elders reluctant to be vaccinated. However, the rate of severe illness among those diagnosed and unvaccinated is relatively high. Therefore, we have decided to sort out the information and correct concepts of various vaccines to eliminate everyone's prejudice against vaccines. Therefore, our participation in the SDGs Proposal Competition can promote our ideas and actually put our plans into practice.

In the process of preparing the SDGs proposal competition, we are also researching related materials of other SDGs projects. During our research, we found that Japan's Ono High School is working on promoting SDGs, so we contacted them for science-related exchanges. After this exchange, both parties felt that this was a very meaningful activity, so they signed to become sister schools and conduct multiple physical or online exchanges every year.

After many exchanges with foreign schools, we found that Taiwan also needs to actively promote SDGs. In the case that many high schools in many countries are promoting SDGs, we will focus on primary school students. After discussion, we found that the most effective promotion method for children is to play games. So we designed two board games, one about vaccines and one for children to learn more about SDGs. The vaccine board game is divided into three levels: easy, medium and difficult, so that everyone can understand the vaccines and prevention methods against different viruses.

As for SDGs board games, it is played in the form of a monopoly, and by answering questions about various goals, children can better understand the content of SDGs and the SDGs goals corresponding to various occupations. At the same time, we also conducted a questionnaire to understand the children's initial thoughts on SDGs.

SDGs events in Mingdao High School

MDHS SDGs Summit

Through the summit, our members were separated into different teams, we learned about the definition and how to distinguish the difference between each goal. The summit inspired us to connect SDGs to our project. In that way, synthetic biology could not only benefit human activities, but also pay back to the earth.

After the first exchange, MDHS and Ono High School both felt that this activity would help students to explore the interests of science and cultural exchanges between Taiwan and Japan . Also,SDGs is one of the agendas of this meeting. Therefore, we signed to hold online exchanges every year and hope to get physical contact with them after the rules of the pandemic prevention are expected to be loosened.

SDGs Implementation Proposal

To become more engaged with more SDGs activities, our team also participated in the annual SDGs proposal competition. This event gave us a platform to interpret what the goals distributed to each team represented and offer solutions on how we could make changes to it with our own words.

IGEM Intramural Presentation

During our intramural presentation, we mentioned about how we’ve addressed two SDGs through our overall preparation stage, the two goals are:

• Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being
• Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

While we explained the coherence between our project and the two goals we’ve picked out, one of the teachers suggested we consult with the school’s SDGs committee, where we might get more feedback and recommendations.

Feedbacks

Aside from the numerous advices and courses we received, together, through discussion, iGEM Mingdao and MDHS SDGs Committee figured out one more addressable goal:

• Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities

Nevertheless, there will be three goals in total which our project addresses, for more detailed information, we listed correlation between each goal and our act down below.

Designing a board game

As mentioned in the background above, we designed a board game and a questionnaire for elementary school students to enhance their understanding of the goals and details of SDGs.

In the questionnaire part, we designed two types of questionnaires in total. The first is to understand the level of understanding of primary school students about the SDGs and related questions about the goals of the SDGs. We focused on goals 3, 10, and 12 which met our product goals, and counted their responses. The other is a summary of their reflections brought by this event and whether they have a better understanding of SDGs. (For details, please see the part in Interactions With Other SDGs)

As for the board game, the purpose we designed it is to let others practice SDGs and get to know them by actually playing our board game. Our board game is based on the background of Monopoly, and points are obtained by answering questions of different difficulty. The rules of the board games we designed are as follows:

• Divided into two teams, each person draws a character card before the game starts.
• Roll the dice to determine the number of spaces to move forward.
• If you walk to a small pebble, answer the basic question; if you walk to a plank, answer the open-ended question. You can get points by answering the basic questions correctly. In addition to getting points, you can walk up the ladder by answering the open-ended questions correctly (the person who answers the question is the person who roll the dice)
• Bonus points will be awarded if the corresponding objective of the character selected by the person answering the question matches the objective question answered.
• When one of the teams reaches the end, they will get points, and the points will be calculated at the same time. The team with the highest points wins.

While playing board games, as long as the children draw the questions of goals 3, 10, and 12, we will instill the concept of our products so that they can gain lots of ideas when writing the questionnaire after playing the board game.(For details, please see the part in Education)

In this activity, a child had hearing problems and needed hearing aids to hear what we said clearly. Our interaction with the hearing-impaired child also demonstrated the inclusiveness of our team.

Through this board game, it can be seen that elementary school students can understand most of the SDGs goals and answer the open-minded questions very well. Among them, they also came up with answers that we hadn't envisaged in advance, to our great surprise. We hope that through this board game, they can take more action to solve the world's problems in the future, and we hope to promote SDGs to more children.

SDGs events for public

SDGs Proposal Competition

Many elderly people choose not to be vaccinated because they are afraid of the side effects of vaccines, but their severe disease rate is high. Therefore, whether to vaccinate has become a test question for the elderly. It is hoped that after interviewing the public and doctors, a short version of practices will be made to provide the elderly with correct information and promote the vaccination rate.

First of all, we designed an online questionnaire to ask people whether they have been vaccinated, the reasons for not vaccinating, and whether they would be willing to use oral vaccines if available. Then, we visit doctors to obtain valuable information and organize them into a short version of practices for everyone. Finally, we created a fundraising platform and a fundraising box, and everyone's contributions became the funds for us to share correct knowledge everywhere.

On the day of the competition, each group has ten minutes to present their proposal. In addition to publishing, we also give reviewers a browse through a short version of practices we made. After our presentation, they asked many questions and ways to improve to help make our plan easier to implement. By participating in the SDGs competition, our plan will not only get a wider response, but also be truly implemented in the future.

Based on the results of the previous online surveys, we actually went to visit seniors and explained to them with the short version of practices we made. After the interview, it was found that the elderly would have doubts about vaccination because they saw negative reports in the media and did not know much about vaccine-related knowledge. Through the information we have previously searched on the Internet and a short version of practices we made after interviewing with doctors, it not only makes it easier for the elders to obtain correct information, but also makes it easier to read.

We hope that through our efforts, seniors can make decisions easier after obtaining the information they deserve. In the future, we will also promote more health education knowledge to the elderly and practice the vision of "leave no one behind".

After the interview, it was discovered that there is a big gap between the old and young people's views on vaccines.Older people are worried about more side effects , which leads to low vaccination rates, while young people feel that the chances of accidents are low and they are rest assured to be vaccinated. During this interview, we got more doctors' views on vaccines and professional knowledge, and also promoted the elderly's vaccination rate according to the doctor's recommendations. It is hoped that through public health education and correct concepts, the elderly will have a deeper understanding of vaccines and will not be afraid of vaccination.

Impacts of our work

Society

The study found that according to the data of all age groups, the mortality rate of unvaccinated people over 50 years old increased significantly, nearly 10% for 70 to 79 years old, and as high as 23.5% for people over 80 years old. However, the mortality rate for the 70- to 79-year-old group dropped to about 0.5% for those who received three doses of the vaccine, and to about 3% for those over the age of 80. Therefore, vaccination has become an important topic. Our product - phaccine, allows more people to take the vaccine and achieve the protective effect.

Economics

Vaccination is the most effective way to prevent disease. The principle of vaccines is to inject antigens or genetic material of viruses or bacteria into the human body to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies, so that when the pathogen is actually exposed, an immune response can be produced quickly, reducing the occurrence of infection, serious illness and death. Nevertheless, some people are unable to receive the vaccine due to fear of injections or adverse reactions such as fainting. With phaccine, more people will benefit and equality will be promoted.

Environment

Our products are packaged in recyclable and reusable packaging, and are produced in a non-toxic and environmentally friendly process. Therefore, phaccine not only benefits the people, but the entire manufacturing and trading process can be recycled and reused to achieve a friendly environment.

Interactions With Other SDGs

Questionnaire

In the above questionnaire, we asked the primary school students whether their thoughts of SDGs changed after playing the board game and which goals they wanted to know more about. In the results we received, we found that each target subverted their thinking. What makes us happy is that several students have written specifically about the goals of our products and want to know more about vaccines. This also shows that it is very helpful for kids to know more about SDGs and our products through our board game.

Conclusion

While most of the goals are of interest to children, some such as goal 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation, and goal 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities are not mentioned. In the future, we will continue to promote some easily overlooked goals for everyone to pay more attention to.

Reflection

Throughout all of the SDGs activities we've participated in the past few months, undoubtedly, progress was made. Thanks to all the people who participated in the above-mentioned activities and gave us precious opinions, our team gained awareness on health problems, environmental issues, the many inequalities seen and hidden in society, and etc. Empowered with the knowledge, we will put our best effort into nourishing the penetration of the 17 United Nation Sustainable Goals in society to make the world a better place to live.

Appendix 1

Take a look at MDHS SDGs events in detail. Go here !