I’m sorry Dionysus—A hackathon to tackle ALDH2 deficiency

Name of the activity: I’m sorry Dionysus—A hackathon to tackle ALDH2 deficiency

Country/NMO: Taiwan, China (FMS-Taiwan)

Program: Healthy Lifestyles & Non-Communicable Diseases

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Campaign. Combination of education and advocacy. Campaigns create awareness in society about a certain topic (education aspect) and try to funnel this awareness into pressure on the decision makers to adapt policies accordingly (advocacy aspect).

General description:

ALDH2 deficiency is a problem that has long existed in the entire world especially in East Asia. As a student, we cooperate with TAIES for more professional experiences and resources to stimulate us popping up more ideas to tackle the deadly drinking habits that harm our health in many forms of diseases.

Starting from a basic experiment simply with OK band and medical alcohol, the blush of skin can let us realize the mechanism of how the ALDH2 deficiency can be observed. After a series of speeches and experience sharing from experts to people who once suffered from drinking habits, understanding the cause and effects, the hackthon campaign let us come up with ideas and strategies to tackle the problem and set up the target groups we want to impact.Given funds and resources let us walk into high schools, campuses, clinics, and even broadcast on radio programs. Follow up with promotions on several social medias, we successfully fulfill our main goal- to increase the awareness.

Focus area:

Prevention of NCDs and Health Promotion

Problem statement:

In Taiwan, by adding up all the economic losses and society burdens causing by alcohol consumption or any other alcohol related problems, it can be approximately up to 25.5 billion NTD per year. Especially in Eastern Asia, there’s a bigger chance for those who are the descent of Han ethnic group to suffer the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency.

Target groups:

General population, Medical students, Healthcare Students, Doctors, Other health professionals, Children, Youth, Elderly people

Beneficiaries:

General population, Medical students, Healthcare Students, Other Students, Doctors, Other health professionals, Children, Youth, Women, People with disabilities, Elderly people

Objectives and indicators of success:

-Educate students, amateurs, and experts from various field

-Understand the serious circumstances from different perspectives

-Come up with methods to make the condition better

-Take action and evaluate the results

-Increase awareness of ALDH2 deficiency

Methodology:

— First, we invited professor who is dedicated into the ALDH2 problem around the world and especially in Asia to give us a speech that teach us this basic knowledge of the mechanism of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. Then, help all the attendants to discuss the reason about why asian are highly suffered by ALDH2 deficiency.

–Then, we invited people themselves or whose family suffering from drinking problems, public health scholars, and psychiatrists to share their experiences and how they think about drinking habit.

–After that, we randomly separating attendants into different groups, we give them general papers and materials, asking them to come up with educational activities.

–Being appraised by exports, we give the top 3 teams that won the hackthon funds and resources to take their plans into action.

–Giving questionnaires to students in ,high school, campus, clinic, marathon venue; Having an interview in the radio broadcasting and social medias, we surly increase the awareness.

Plans for evaluation:

As we keep on cooperating in TAIES so as to see the result about how we promote and collecting the datas we owned by questionnaires and tests we’ve done for them, we can as a result year by year to see the progress.

Plus, by entering high schools to give them science classes and experiments, we can collect the database about how they are understand and may affect their future drinking habits.