An Awareness Campaign on Cervical and Ovarian Cancer

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Presented by: Karsang Dawa Lama

Background

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1. Name: Karsang Dawa Lama

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• School: Nepal Mega College, Science (Biology)

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• Interest and Hobbies: Reading books, Listening musics, Travelling

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• Hometown: Humla,Currently living in Kathmandu

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• Why I joined Aakar?

-I am interested in community work

-I always wanted to give back to the community and introduce a positive change

-I wanted to build different skills like effective communication, goal setting, time management, and research knowledge etc.

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Reasons

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1. Increasing number of women suffering from such fatal diseases
2. Decreasing quality of life among women
3. Lack of basic knowledge about their own health and reproductive system
4. I want people to gain knowledge about cervical and ovarian cancer so that they can be aware about the preventive measures and treatment methods

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Context

Problem Statement

Baseline Data

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• This is a graph which shows why women don’t go for screening.
• A total of 57,600 women presented to the Gynecology Clinic of TUTH between April 13, 2016, to April 13, 2017.

Reference:

https://journal.binayfoundation.org/article/

32581

Approach

Creating awareness among youngster (Students)

• Conducted School-based awareness session for students of grade 9 and 10 in Koteshwor Saraswati Secondary School.
• Took pre and post data by providing them with some basic question(MCQ) type.
• Analysed the data graphically.

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Challenges

Lack of time management

• It was very difficult for me to manage time for project with my college.
• Then I learned about the SMART goals and scheduling to manage my time.

Approaching respective administration

• Program was planned for women over 30 but it was during ropaii season so, they could not say yes.
• I adapted my project approach to youngsters.
• Difficulty in finding respective person for the appointments.
• Approached a institution (school) to help me connect with an audience

Convincing students to learn the topic I was speaking

• It was Little difficult for me to describe them because I was using many technical terms which was new for them.
• But I did my best to clarify all terms and make them clear about the topic.
• Learnt about topic myself so I can explain
• Used graphical methods
• Encouraged questions and discussions

Project timeline

Impact: Raising awareness and decreasing stigma around Female Reproductive Health

• School based awareness session reached 23 students.
• Awareness session at Samaanta had 16 attendees.
• Pre-post assessments show increase in average understanding of the topic by 35%.
• Encouraged conversations in a safe space, decreasing stigma around the topic.

Impact 1: increased awareness

No of students attending: 23

Grade 9 and 10

Topics covered to increase knowledge:

• Social context
• Main diseases: Cervical and Ovarian cancer
• Symptoms
• Preventative measures
• Treatment

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Impact 1 measurement: increased awareness

The chart is about the understanding of students before and after the session. I took a pre and post data to know how much they understood from my session.

Improvements:

• No-knowledge group: There were 9% students who had almost no knowledge of the topic, but after the session, it decreased to 0 students in this group
• Overall increase: 88% of students had good to excellent knowledge after the session, significant increase from 69% of students with good knowledge

Impact 2: Safe space for conversation

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• They shared their experience during the session.
• They were aware of the gynecologic cancer and HPV vaccine.

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Add a picture/video relating to this impact

Impact 3: Enabling Students to spread awareness in their network

• One of student said that “I talked to my mom about the importance of regular screening, and she scheduled her first gynecologic check-up in year.”
• They said that “ It is very important in rural area of our country and please continue this project. ”

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What I learned?

• I learned to manage my time and utilize it.
• I gained confidence to speak in public and with professional figures.
• I learned to identify problems in a systematic way and learned to make SMART goals.
• I learned how to analyse the data.
• I become more proficient in using technological tools like Gmail, Slack, Zoom, Powerpoint presentation etcs.

If I had more time, I would

• I would like to build my leadership skills and communication skills.
• I will study more about the gynecologic cancer and prepare the presentation in Nepali so that they can understand.
• Continue the campaign in my village in Humla: I want to conduct the session for women older than 30 after my grade 12

Thank You!

Thank you everyone for listening my presentation.

I am very thankful to Aakar Nepal for such a great opportunity.