Enhancing Public Understanding of Interventional Brain Medicine through Lay Abstracts and Social Media Education

The proposal aims to create extended lay abstracts for approximately 80 research papers produced by our lab that focus on Interventional Brain Medicine technologies. These abstracts will translate complex research outcomes into easily understandable summaries for non-specialists. This project aims to disseminate knowledge away from an in-group of academics and towards the broader population and public policy it hopes to serve. Each week, trainees, patient partners, and research co-leads work in tandem through an iterative process of revisions and open discussions to produce easily comprehensible layman translations of technical academic work. These lay abstracts serve the purpose of narrowing the knowledge-practice gap by encouraging public engagement in research through their publication on open-access platforms such as X and Research Gate as well as the lab’s website and monthly newsletter. In the creation of lay summaries and KT, public and professional perception for these novel methods is to be improved, guiding their future accessibility and easing the burden of illness on a scale both within and outside of BC through the empowering nature of open collaboration with the public.