This post, written by Christine Nieves, originally appeared on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Pioneering Ideas blog. Check out the citizen science projects mentioned in the post, such as: FoldIt, Sound Around You, and FightMalaria@Home.
I remember the distinct feeling of learning about Foldit. It was a mixture of awe and hope for the potential breakthrough contributions a citizen can make towards science (without needing a PhD!). Foldit is an online puzzle video game about protein folding. In 2011, Foldit users decoded an AIDS protein that had been a mystery to researchers for 15 years. The gamers accomplished it in 3 weeks. When I learned this, it suddenly hit me; if we, society, systematically harness the curiosity of citizens, we could do so much!
This is the spirit behind our recent exploration to learn more about how citizen scientists are addressing some of the most pressing problems in health and health care.
Health-related citizen science projects encompass a wide gamut of areas ranging from oncology and epidemiology to more social aspects such as community health and health care delivery. Citizen participation ranges from game play, with projects like Foldit, to data collection using mobile phones and other devices, such as in the noise pollution research project Sound Around You, and data generation using sampling kits or completing surveys, as with Flu Near You. Other projects, such as FightMalaria@Home simply ask individuals to donate their computer’s processing power.
Through “Exploring a Culture of Health: A Citizen Science Series,” a blog series produced by SciStarter—a place to find and participate in citizen science projects—and Discover Magazine, we have spotlighted some of the ways our grantees are working to improve health, from making doctor visits more effective to boosting the health of whole communities. I hope readers of this series will share their own thoughts and ideas about how citizen scientists can get involved and help advance these efforts.
Check out the latest blog posts and join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #citsci:
- Nurses Making Things with their Hands to Improve Healthcare: How are nurses crafting devices out of ordinary materials to improve health care? Have you created anything to help you care for sick family members at home?
- Creating a Roadmap to Community Health: How does your county rank in terms of health? What data could you collect to help improve health in your county?
- How Can We Visualize Health Data for Better Communication? What’s the best way to show health data you’ve collected to achieve biggest impact?
- Detecting Signals of Wellbeing: What everyday devices could we tap to monitor health? What if your phone could alert your doctor to a change in your behavior or if grandma’s stove could tell you she is already up and about in the morning?
- Building Resilience to Undo the Effects of Childhood Trauma: What happens to kids who face difficulties like poverty or neglect early in life? How can we help those who have experienced trauma and how can we prevent early adversity from happening in the first place?
- Connecting Patients and Researchers to Enhance Discovery: How can knowledge contributed by patients further medical discovery and improve health care? How can researchers collaborate more meaningfully with citizens and patients?
- Disrupting the Doctor’s Office with Flip the Clinic: As a patient, what has frustrated you about your medical encounters? As a medical provider, what ideas do you have or challenges do you experience?