Smile Mates
Smile Mates_Best Education and Public Engagement:
Best Education! Although dental caries trouble people around the world,especially in China, we haven't pay enough attention to oral caring methods or to our own oral conditions. Thus we organized this human practice to benefit our mates in the campus, arousing individuals' attention to dental caries prevention. Most of our participators were students, but we also met with a 5-year-old little girl and some faculties and dustmen above 40 years old. By giving and explaining a certificated oral condition exam for free, we helped our mates know more about the role of bacteria population in containing our oral homeostasis. Then we offered several advice for each of the participators while explain our new dental caries solution, including some basic transgenic principles. At last we asked them to check their oral condition routinely so our idea could be spread from time to time. Best Public Engagement! As mentioned above, we have a large scale of engagement and triaged a wave of curiosity and care about the oral hygiene throughout our campus. Our mates' attention covered from their own well being, which is our primary aim, to the principle of homeostasis and transgenic, even to the final cure of dental caries. We gave them a little questionnaire during the queuing, chatting with them, from which we not only established dialogue but also found some interesting points of views outside the lab:- 1.Relating to human health care, the public needs more patience and confidence for young scientists while young scientists must try to make the product practicable and easy to reach. Kindness and care outside the pure medical science is what matters most. Since the young dentists and the young scientists are actually college mates here, we received massive trusts and kindness during the whole process. However this also pushing us to try our best in our iGEM project this year.
- 2.The more direct the show is, the larger the impact could be. "You won't worry that much until your college mate check and tell you that you got a bad tooth." one of our mates said. Actually this kind of examination is a relatively new activity in our campus and we successfully caught tons of attention during the process, which means this is a new efficient way to advertising oral caring.
Smile Mates
In practice, we invited two graduate students in College of Stomatology who have the Practicing Doctors Certificate to do examination of oral cavity of participants in our university.
Fig.1 Certificated oral condition exam.
Fig.2 Students doing the examination.
We have a busy time during the practice.
Firstly, we encouraged everyone who was interested in our practice to fill a form about his or her daily habits such as the time they cost on each teeth brushing, the frequency they brush teeth in one day, and whether they have tried some assistant methods such as mouth wash to keep the oral hygiene.
After finishing the questionnaire they could accept the examination for free, and the dentists would curtly told them their teeth condition and the knowledge about prevention of dental caries. During their waiting time, we also had lots of interactions.
After that, we took photos of their happy faces withfronting their teeth and invited them to do the Lucky Draw, where we prepared lots of prizes relevant to teeth health, from toothbrush to mouthwash, and most people were accompanied with satisfaction, happiness and also the prizes. At the same time, we distributed the leaflets which contain the introduction of the iGEM and our project, also some basic information about dental caries.
Fig.3 All of the organizer and dentists
Fig.1 Certificated oral condition exam.
Fig.2 Students doing the examination.
We have a busy time during the practice.
Firstly, we encouraged everyone who was interested in our practice to fill a form about his or her daily habits such as the time they cost on each teeth brushing, the frequency they brush teeth in one day, and whether they have tried some assistant methods such as mouth wash to keep the oral hygiene.
After finishing the questionnaire they could accept the examination for free, and the dentists would curtly told them their teeth condition and the knowledge about prevention of dental caries. During their waiting time, we also had lots of interactions.
After that, we took photos of their happy faces withfronting their teeth and invited them to do the Lucky Draw, where we prepared lots of prizes relevant to teeth health, from toothbrush to mouthwash, and most people were accompanied with satisfaction, happiness and also the prizes. At the same time, we distributed the leaflets which contain the introduction of the iGEM and our project, also some basic information about dental caries.
Fig.3 All of the organizer and dentists
Smile Mates
This practice lasted for nearly three hours, about fifty people joined us. And averagely we achieved our goal that raised public consciousness about dental caries prevention in our campus. Through the practice, people began to care about their teeth and may want to see the dentists, do some cure of their dental caries. Also they wish we can finish our experiment, finally find a way to control or even cure the disease.
We not only devote to research the cure of dental caries just in library, during the practice, we got the data about how people are troubled by the teeth disease. We believe the activity do help the participants to prevent dental caries, and individuals who just asked questions to us then took leaflets may also got the basic knowledge about the disease. Considering normal people's attitude about dental health, we will try our best to make our program more meaningful and practicable.
Fig.4 Faces of participants smiling happily.
Fig.4 Faces of participants smiling happily.
