Meet Education and Outreach grant recipient: Kitty Guo
Posted on November 21, 2024 by Microbiology Society
The Microbiology Society Outreach and Engagement Grant provides up to £1000 to support relevant science outreach or public engagement initiatives that engage new audiences in the art and science in any aspect of microbiology.
Meet the grant receipients and learn more about their projects.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your work?
I am Kitty, a Clinical Lecturer and PhD student in the School of Dentistry, University of Dundee. As bacteria are the foundation of understanding dental disease, my research is focused on microbiology, in particular the roles oral bacteria have on human health and disease beyond the mouth.
Can you describe your outreach project?
This outreach project involved visits to remote, rural communities in Kenya. Three undergraduate dental students, Beth Heaney, Orla O’Brien and Priya Purewal, from the University of Dundee, led the delivery of the educational outreach activities. The locations visited included schools, health centres, vocational training centres and community meetings. We reached over 7500 members of the community, including schoolchildren, teachers, community leaders, health care workers and young adult learners over a course of two weeks.
Why is it important to educate and discuss AMR in the community?
The communities we visited have limited access to dental care and general health care, but antibiotics are easily accessed without prescription. We hope that educating the community can help provide information to help individuals make informed decisions about their health and to empower them to share the knowledge amongst their communities.
An additional significant benefit of this project is the engagement of undergraduate dental students, who will become future antibiotic prescribers. Students who, in their own words, “didn’t know much about AMR” at the start of the project left with a much greater understanding of the worldwide impacts of AMR and what they can do in their future careers to reduce the effects of AMR.
Can you describe the link between dental care in relation to AMR?
Dentists prescribe around 10% of antibiotics in the UK, most commonly for dental infections or for prophylaxis for certain patient groups or procedures. Most dental infections are preventable through basic oral hygiene measures and education. When infections originating from a tooth do progress, these can be resolved by achieving drainage and completing root canal therapy or extracting the offending tooth. Because of this, antibiotics are usually not indicated for instances of infection of dental origin. In instances of severe infection with systemic involvement, antibiotics are recommended, but only in combination with definitive treatment of the tooth. Antibiotics alone are ineffective for infections of dental origin because of their inability to reach therapeutic concentrations at the infection source, the necrotic dental pulp.
Therefore, improving oral health will reduce the occurrence of dental infections in the first place, reducing the need or perceived need for antibiotic therapy.
You have developed a collaboration with a team in Kenya; can you tell us how this relationship was established?
The collaboration with the team in Kenya (Charity Ace Africa and AMR network ReAct) was initiated following my attendance at an AMR session at the Microbiology Conference in 2023. I was put in contact with the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, who work together with ReAct and Ace Africa. Dundee Dental School initially started with some fundraising for the Tippy Taps Kenya project, raising money to help fund clean water and handwashing facilities in remote areas of Kenya. This subsequently led to the conversation on the oral health education project.
In your work, you created a ‘tool kit’, what does this tool kit entail?
The tool kit addresses critical learning points in relation to oral health and antimicrobial resistance. Initially, this involved the development of teaching activities for schoolchildren with three distinct interactive sessions: 1. The dental decay process 2. Prevention of dental decay through effective toothbrushing 3. The role of antibiotics in relation to dental health and toothache. All the equipment was left at the charity office for schools to request and be able to use for future sessions. We are working with Ace Africa and ReAct to ensure that the tool kit can be developed, refined and adapted to suit the different audiences it will be used for.
How has the Microbiology Society supported you?
The Microbiology Society has supported us in providing the opportunity to network with others involved with AMR and set up this collaboration. We were also very appreciative for the award of the Education and Outreach grant that helped to fund our activities.
What’s next for your outreach work?
We plan to promote this opportunity amongst dental/medical students in future years where we can continue these oral health/AMR outreach activities. We are continuing to work with the organisations in Kenya to improve our resources to help the provision of local delivery of the outreach activities.
View from the students:
The project gave me a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel to a part of the world I wouldn’t have otherwise visited. Engaging with the schools and local community was an incredibly fulfilling experience, as I felt they were very grateful and eager to hear our message about oral health and AMR. The project also broadened my perspective about AMR and how dentists have a very big responsibility in educating people about its impact. I now feel very passionate about AMR and have a much better understanding of its effects at a patient level as well as a worldwide impact.
It was great to monitor the effectiveness of our programme using pre and post session questionnaires. In terms of AMR teaching, we saw an overall positive change in participants knowledge, which was rewarding to know that our teaching on AMR was of value.
To allow our project to be feasible, we required funding. We carried out a programme where we ran “5 km every day, for the month of May” which raised an overwhelming £2160. A further £1000 was contributed by The Microbiology Society to support our project, which we were extremely grateful for. With funding, we were able to produce a variety of educational resources and materials to facilitate teaching as well as basic dental supplies (toothpaste and toothbrushes) that were provided to the communities we visited.
We feel very fortunate to have had an amazing opportunity to work alongside Ace Africa and React Africa to make a difference in rural Kenya, whereby we shared our knowledge on oral health with context to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), through visiting schools and health centres. Our intervention involved educating the public on AMR within the field of dentistry, through interactive activities. AMR is a hugely prevalent public health issue with serious consequences, which drove our passion to deliver a project in hope of raising AMR awareness amongst the communities we visited.
We look forward to the future and the opportunities that lie ahead to allow the continuation of this project, alongside our partner charities, to help combat the pressing issue of antimicrobial resistance.