Sci Comm Strategy for Clostridium difficle Infection!

        As a Biology major, I have dove into research and science my entire undergraduate career, but it hasn’t been until recently that I began to think about how to effectively share my knowledge with a larger population. Unfortunately, as a college student, I find that we are all too familiar with being stuck in the “academic bubble,” where we fail to truly understand the worth of our accomplishments and achievements outside of the academy. For my last semester at Cornell, I enrolled in BIOG 3500, Introduction to Applied Science Communication: Digital Platforms and Public Engagement in an effort to learn more about how to communicate science beyond conferences and poster sessions. But boy did I learn so much more! All 15 students enrolled in the class (sounds small, but trust me when I say it made the online classroom experience so much more personal and engaging) were tasked with creating a science communication strategy on a topic of their choice. From producing podcasts to directing my own little video to editing Wikipedia articles, I know for a fact that I will take these skills to my graduate career. 

        For my communication strategy, I decided to focus on increasing awareness of Clostridium difficile infection in the United States. C. diff is a bacteria that causes inflammation of the colon and deadly diarrhea and is usually associated with antibiotic usage and healthcare facilities. As a microbiology researcher and an Infectious Disease minor, I have always been fascinated with the study of pathogenic bacteriology and the physical, chemical, and biologic characteristics of the disease they cause. For this project, I decided to take a public health spin to it with the ultimate goal of increasing urgency and seriousness towards nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections.  For my strategy, I decided to focus on answering 3 questions:

• What are healthcare-associated infections, and more specifically, what is a C. diff infection, and why are they deadly and hard to treat?
  
• What are the major driving forces that increase the number of C. diff infections in the United States? 
  
• What actions can patients do to decrease the risk of contracting C. diff? 
  

This week, I made 5 Twitter posts covering each of these bullet points, linking recent peer-reviewed studies as well as infographics and other aspects of my project. One of my largest undertakings for this project is my 8-panel 2-page long comic that I hand drew using a notebook app iPad (I have no idea how to use those sophisticated apps specifically made for artists). I am definitely not an artist, but it was so much fun utilizing my imagination to showcase a science-dense topic in a more comedic spotlight. I also made a 3-minute video using Animaker on the overview of infection with C. diff. Topics I covered include: 1) defining what a C. diff infection is, 2) risk factors of infection, 3) routes of transmission and 4) ways of prevention. This video was also my first attempt at making an animated video and while the editing took way longer than I had planned, I had so much fun explaining the basics of bacterial infection. 

        I also created a podcast for my fictitious channel “Science Talks,” interviewing Dr. David Calfee, the Chief Hospital Epidemiologist at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, and the Deputy Medical Director of the Department of Infection Prevention and Control at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (so cool!!).  We discussed a multitude of topics, specifically focusing on his work in a recently published article on a 3-month quality improvement initiative on environmental cleaning and disinfection in NYC facilities. I also had the opportunity to talk to him about the local and national antimicrobial stewardship programs and the impacts they have had so far on mitigating the spread of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak to a nationally and internationally recognized leader in hospital epidemiology and infection control. Feel free to listen to the podcast on my SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/sophia-qu-586865046/interview-of-dr-david-calfee-clostridium-difficle-prevention. 

Overall, these past few weeks working on this project have been so amusing. Unlike many other projects I have had to complete in college, I was able to use my newly found skills in artistry and video/podcast creation. As spoken by Dr. Calfee in the interview, the future for C. diff infection control is very bright as nation-wide campaigns by the CDC and NIH over the past 5 years have managed to curb the spread of epidemics. I hope that everyone remains vigilant against microbial pathogens, especially during a global pandemic! 

P.S Feel free to check out aspects of my project on this blog!