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Youth-GEMs 18th Science Café
A Science Café on internal and external science communication! First guests, Carolina Vieira and Flore Joskin (who work as communication professionals for the Youth-GEMs consortium) followed up on one of the previous Science Cafés dedicated to the website and social media activities within Youth-GEMs. Based on feedback of young experts the website will be restructured, new pages will be added and there will be more emphasis on youth participation. Next to that, information will be simplified and there will be an new visual identity. With respect to social media a new content calendar will pay attention to more variety in topics, more informal content and engagement. Also, lived experience and research updates inside and outside of Youth-GEMs will be added to the social media platforms.
In Youth-GEMs the co-creation with young experts is highly valued. For the next subject of this Science Café, this is also the starting point. Two young researchers, Sanne Berkers and Anna Wiersema (both involved in work package 4) presented and discussed an idea to reach a broader and maybe younger audience via podcasts or video’s. In these episodes a young person interviews a Youth-GEMs’ scientist and vice versa. The interviews should ideally feel like a natural conversation where both guests are equal authorities from a different perspective. Young experts gave different tips and tricks regarding this idea and will be involved in the next steps. Of course we will keep you posted!
Youth-GEMs 17th Science Café
This Science Café had two main subjects: app development and identification of gene-environment interactions.
For the first subject, Margherita Lagamba (biomedical researcher) was invited to give an update to the young experts of Euro Youth Mental Health who are involved throughout our research consortium. In Youth-GEMs apps are developed which can be used by youth and their clinicians to monitor and/or predict on mental health trajectories. For one of the apps, a first version was tested by young experts for a period of 8 weeks. In different sessions several questions were asked about the onboarding, login, permissions and activities provided by the app. The testers were positive about the onboarding and login (easy, simple) of the app, the possibility to change permissions at any moment, the nice and engaging activities (especially about the positive experiences they bring) and the tracking sessions to monitor themselves. In the app bugs were fixed as well, an information button was added for more detailed information about permissions. The text of certain questions was improved or removed. The researchers in work package 6 are still working on the app, but the first version is almost ready for clinical testing. Very exciting news of course!
Angelo Arias Magnasco (researcher in work package 5) was next on the agenda. The researchers in work package 5 conduct so called ‘GenomeWideAssocationStudies’ (GWAS) in order to identify the genetic regions of mental health conditions. Based on these studies a ‘Poly Genetic Score’ can be determined which can be seen as a risk score for certain mental health conditions. Besides this score, an ‘Exposome Score’ can be determined: the additive score of environmental exposure factors on mental health conditions. Environmental factors such as life style and surroundings also affect mental health conditions. So both the scores and especially the interaction between genes and environment may predict mental health trajectories. The aim of work package 5 is tot entangle the interactions between genes and environment in order to gain more insight in (the prediction of) mental health trajectories. The researchers therefore analyse longitudinal datasets from all over the world. The collaboration with young experts and researchers in the other work packages enable them to investigate these interactions from different perspectives. Young experts reflected with Angelo on what environmental factors would be interesting to investigate further. They suggested amongst others: the effect of sounds in the environment, percentage of green in the environment and the digital environment/social media.
