Hello everyone!
Recently we were able to publish one of the first studies to identify PD prevalence in Brazil in a nation-wide manner using a representative sample of the population. With this study, however, came something interesting that never happened to me before: I could see the impact our scientific findings can have in the media and on policy making.
We first asked our institution to publish a small note pertaining the study on it’s website. However, to our surprise, things escalated quickly and before anything, me and my mentor were giving interviews to local media radio and TV and seeing a lot of different articles being published based on our results (see pictures below).
In addition to those interviews, it seems this article and its results also inspired politicians to make a move, and now it is possible that a new law regarding PD awareness and care will be discussed in the congress in Brazil.
These fortunate sequence of events led me to think, for the first time, that we scientists must also always take this aspect of our work in mind, independently of the field we are working on. People in society are eager to know more about what we do and they, to some degree, rely on our findings with hopes of a better future.
In my opinion, I think that we should embrace this outreaching aspect of our work and always think on how to make what we do known to the world when we publish something. And it can even start with something small, as it was our case, such as a brief article present inside our institution`s website.
And about you, dear post reader? Have you ever thought of this aspect or our work before? And do you have any experiences to share regarding a situtation similar to the one I’ve lived? Please, tell me more!