Preface

In modern ages, with the rise of the global economy, people have more freedom to choose what foods or drinks to have and usually intake too much nutrition. Thus, there are more people diagnosed with diabetes. From the IDF (International Diabetes Federation), in 2000, there were 153 million people with diabetes around the world. By 2021, the number had increased to 537 million (aged 20-79). In addition, according to WHO (World Health Organization), people with diabetes in their lifetime have a 25% chance of foot ulcers which may relate to diabetes. Hence, even though diabetes is a chronic disease and it seems easy to control the condition of the illness, we can’t still underestimate it and get slack with it. For the purpose of enhancing people’s perception of diabetes, we designed some programs to achieve our goals.


Social Media

To raise awareness of the disease and promote the knowledge of other sciences, such as synthetic biology, we set up Facebook, Instagram, Twitter fanpages, and a YouTube channel. The contents in these channels include information on diabetes, synthetic biology, and iGEM competition. These materials can be kept even after the competition, and those pieces of knowledge endure spreading throughout the globe. However, when we search the information about the above keywords on the Internet, there are numerous pieces of information written in English, but few in Chinese. That’s the reason we choose to write articles and subtitle videos in Chinese in order to push those knowledges into the Chinese-speaking world.

Our Facebook


Our Instagram


Our Twitter


Youtube Channel - Taiwan iGEM

Our YouTube channel is named Taiwan iGEM. It’s operated by 11 iGEM teams from Taiwan. The contents of the videos include audiobooks about popular science and project promotion videos of every Taiwan iGEM team. We decided to make this YouTube channel a long-term community for iGEM teams in Taiwan. Up to the present, the channel has uploaded 11 videos, 6.1K impressions received, and got 214 views.

Our Youtube Channel


Our Youtube Vodeos


A Survey in Farmers Market at NCHU

NCHU holds a Farmers' Market from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturdays. Hundreds of people come here to buy organic vegetables and fruits. The consumers and sellers are mostly aged above 50. From the analysis based on epidemiological data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) current dataset from the Institute of Health Metrics, Seattle, the incidence of diabetes peaks at around 55 years of age [1]. Therefore, this Farmers Market is an ideal occasion to make a survey. In the survey, we asked the respondents if they were diabetes patients, their thoughts on their illness conditions, and medical treatments.

The survey provided us with the following information:

  • People with diabetes did find their wounds heal more slowly.
  • Hydrocolloid dressings were mostly used.
  • Stickiness and price were the vital factors they chose the wound dressings.

According to the information, we we got to know what problems we could emphasize to solve, and what materials to use.


Science Knowledge Sharing in Farmers Market

Besides the survey, we also explained our project in the form of a poster session, and shared some knowledge of diabetes with the consumers and sellers there in Chinese. We demonstrated to the audience why our project came up, how it was conducted, and how it would manage the issues of wounds in people with diabetes. Thankfully, the audience looked forward to our project being applied to the real world.


Popular Science Article on PanSci

PanSci is the largest popular science resources website in Taiwan, and thus it’s widely used in Taiwan and even the Chinese-speaking world. Since there are already plenty of articles about diabetes and chronic wounds on PanSci, we wrote an article about our main materials- natto. Natto is a common food in Japan, and has become popular in Taiwan recently owing to its benefits in promoting health. In this article, we described the healthy ingredients in natto and their physical functions, which are associated with our project. What’s more, natto’s origin and some other interesting facts were also included.


Reference

  1. Khan, M., Hashim, M. J., King, J. K., Govender, R. D., Mustafa, H., & Al Kaabi, J. (2020). Epidemiology of Type 2 Diabetes - Global Burden of Disease and Forecasted Trends. Journal of epidemiology and global health, 10(1), 107–111. https://doi.org/10.2991/jegh.k.191028.001