Public Engagement

Dr Megan MacLeod, University of Glasgow

Working with Anderston Primary School over a four year period (2020-23), Dr MacLeod and her team are engaging and informing primary pupils about immune cell communication and how this allows vaccine-induced protection to occur in reponse to respiratory infections. The project is designed to empower pupils to design their own activities and displays. Pupils will then use these activities to share their learning with younger pupils, the local community and the wider public at a series of events including annually at Glasgow Science Festival.

The team were able to visit the school for the first time just before the first lockdown in 2020, when respiratory infections were extremely topical! Since then they have been adapting their activities to work with the children online. As well as reseachers from the MacLeod lab, the team includes partners from the School of Simulation and Visualisation, at Glasgow School of Art. Working with the pupils, they have created an app that uses Augmented Reality (AR) as a simulation to help people visualise what happens when they get a respiratory viral infection. The pupils hope to demonstrate this activity at community libraries across Glasgow as part of Glasgow Science Festival in September 2021.

• CO-IMMUNICATE
• News story: First session of Co-Immunicate project delivered
• MacLeod group's wider public engagement activities

Professor Anne Kerr, University of Glasgow and Professor Sarah Cunningham Burley, University of Edinburgh

Cancer research and care are changing, with new genomic technologies meaning some patients can be offered tests and drugs that are individually targeted. This project co-produced a graphic novel with people involved in developments of novel cancer treatments, sharing the experiences of patients, carers, health care professionals, scientists and others. This helped to convey the complexities of genomic medicine and the social and ethical issues it raises. As well as being visually attractive, the graphic novel format helped avoid language and literacy barriers. During its development the novel was also used in workshops to help patients and carers produce their own short graphic stories based on their experiences. Adaptation to the Coronavirus pandemic meant moving activities online. This worked well and widened the audience who were able to take part. Participants were empowered to question, influence and advocate, and their stories were showcased in a final celebratory event in early 2021 that shared learning from the project.

​The project aimed to enhance the ways that patients and others are engaged and considered in the process and outcomes of research. By promoting greater awareness of and communication about the complexity of precision oncology, it helped patients, their families and health care professionals to be better prepared to meet these challenges.

The graphic novel has been requested by clinicians/clinical educators to use in training and copies are being distributed to cancer charities and further individuals on request.

The graphic novel, patient stories and a short film are available at https://tailoredtreatments.wordpress.com and more information about the project can be found at https://ziggyswish.com/projects/tailored-treatments

• Professor Anne Kerr

This 2-year project aims to directly support the inclusion, involvement and engagement of older adults in scientific research into the aging brain. Dr Gemma Learmonth and her team are hosting priority-setting discussion groups with older adults in the local community to identify questions surrounding brain aging that are important and meaningful to older people.

Older people will then co-produce research projects together with postgraduate students, and the students will collect data to answer these questions. The results of these projects, and other cutting-edge research about the aging brain, will be fed back to the local community via table-top outreach events.

Aging with Impact aims to provide opportunities for older people to become involved in the planning and development of research projects, and for researchers to undertake research that is developed ‘with’, rather than ‘about’, older people. The project seeks to improve the real-world relevance and impact of scientific research outputs into cognitive aging.

• Dr Gemma Learmonth

Dr Pearce’s Wellcome research uses existing, anonymised data such as birth records, hospital admissions and child health checks to examine why children growing up in less-advantaged socio-economic circumstances live shorter and less healthy lives than their more-advantaged peers.

Working with Clydebank primary schools, and Children’s Neighbourhoods Scotland, they are explaining how this research is currently conducted, exploring what’s most important to the community themselves, and work with the children to identify, conduct and share the findings from a mini research project.

• Dr Anna Pearce

Professor Katie Hampson, University of Glasgow

This project will share the stories and voices of communities affected by rabies, bringing insights and understanding to policymakers, practitioners and other communities grappling with this deadly virus.

Long-term research and disease surveillance has led to the elimination of rabies on Pemba Island, Tanzania, and local engagement with contact tracing has played a vital role in this success. Researchers from the University of Glasgow and Ifakara Health Institute will create data visualisations that bring to life key research findings and the human stories behind them, and use these to consult with people directly affected by rabies and those involved in fighting it. Together they will incorporate individuals’ experiences to create an accessible, interactive platform that will help local communities influence rabies research, management and policy. The team will work with community leaders to share Pemba’s experiences, successes and challenges with decision makers and other rabies-affected communities in East Africa. These communities will feed in their own experiences of rabies, informing future research.

• Professor Katie Hampson

Professor Annette MacLeod, University of Glasgow

Parasite Street Science will tackle the serious issue of broken trust between scientists, health professionals and local communities affected by sleeping sickness in Malawi. It will work with local community members, scientists, medical practitioners/ health professionals and theatre practitioners in order to facilitate multi directional knowledge exchange. The community members will be those with lived experience of sleeping sickness. The project will create and tour a new interactive performance in Malawi that will encourage direct interaction between the performers and the audiences.  Performances will be supported by two digital elements ensuring a tangible legacy to the project: 1. An online interactive resource enabling further discussion between the public and scientists around new scientific information and ways of addressing sleeping sickness for show audiences and a wider online audience.  2. An interactive practical guide that leads scientists, local community members and theatre makers through the process of developing and performing their own similar public engagement performances. The long-term goal of the project will be to improve trust, thereby increasing dialogue and awareness of diagnostics and treatment options, and ultimately drive down sleeping sickness disease burden.

• Professor Annette MacLeod

Dr Benjamin Brennan, University of Glasgow

Ticks and the diseases they carry have become an increasing concern in Scotland with more people accessing the outdoors due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, coupled with a potential increase in the time ticks are active throughout the year due to climate change causing milder winters. In Scotland the largest threat from tick bites is currently Lyme disease with an incidence of up to 5% of ticks. However, given the recent emergence of Tick-borne encephalitisvirus (TBEV) in the UK it is more urgent than ever to raise awareness of the dangers posed from tick bites. By raising awareness and engaging people about ticks and tick-borne diseases (TBDs) we aim to open dialogue and empower our audiences to make informed decisions about accessing the outdoors.

During this project we will:

1. Co-develop a citizen science platform with The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) to open dialogue with people about ticks and tick-borne disease across Scotland.
2. Engage people who use the outdoors across Scotland with ticks and tick-borne disease through developing our network of outdoor organisations and local authorities.
3. Identify and engage with communities who are at-risk from ticks and tick-borne diseases who are digitally excluded.

• What makes Viruses tick? 
• Contact: cvr-viruses-tick@glasgow.ac.uk