Behind the Scenes – March 2018

March has been another busy month for Eric and myself.  As mentioned in our inaugural article, these pieces are designed to give our community an insight into what is happening in the day-to-day running of MStranslate, as well as what you might have to look forward to in coming months.

BUILDING BRAINTRANSLATE

It is our pleasure to report that we will once again be collaborating with the Melbourne Brain Centre at Royal Melbourne Hospital (MBC@RMH) to extend and grow their science communication initiative, ‘BRAINtranslate’.  BRAINtranslate is the MBC@RMH’s public engagement platform, which is designed to keep people informed about the amazing research that their teams are doing across a variety of neurological conditions, including multiple sclerosis, stroke, epilepsy and brain tumours.

For us, it is fantastic that the MBC@RMH have not only recognised the importance of effectively communicating scientific research studies and their outcomes to the general public, but also our excellence in how this should be done.  If you would like to stay up to date with this work, you can do so by following the MBC@RMH on Facebook or by visiting the BRAINtranslate website.

FACEBOOK LIVE PLANNING

In other exciting news, it has recently been announced that Dr Terry Wahls will be visiting Australia to do a series of presentations about her research and approach to managing multiple sclerosis.  For people that may be interested in attending these events, more information can be found here.  Recognising that the MStranslate community has consistently displayed a huge interest in the role that dietary and lifestyle modifications can play in helping improve the day to day lives of people with MS, we have always aimed to provide as much high-quality information on these topics as possible.

Further, we are excited to announce that we are in ongoing discussions to conduct a Facebook Live Q&A with Dr Wahls while she is visiting Australia.  At this stage, no specifics have been determined, however, we have an agreement from both sides to make this happen.  This will be another excellent opportunity for you to interact with Dr Wahls and ask her any questions that you might have about her research.  As the planning for this event progresses, we will keep you up to date with posts on our Facebook page.  To make sure you don’t miss out, ‘Like’ and ‘Follow’ our Facebook page and regularly check what we are posting.  You can also select an option under the ‘Follow’ button to have content appear at the top of your newsfeed, ensuring you don’t miss any of our posts.

A VISIT TO GEELONG

Also in March, I had the pleasure of visiting and presenting to the Geelong MS Group, who made me feel incredibly welcome.  It’s funny, no matter how many of these talks I give, there is always a little build up of nerves beforehand!!  There might have even been a little bit of added pressure this time, as it was the first time that the group had met.  Thankfully, all went smoothly, the topics that I talked about were really well received and there was some fantastic questions and discussions at the end.  In a nice change, the train ride home from Geelong that evening had a long stretch without phone reception…this enforced ‘switching off’ gave me time to reflect on what we do at MStranslate and why we are doing it.  As I said in the February article, a huge motivation and driving force for me is all of the amazing people that I have gotten to meet over the journey of the past 5 years.  It was great to be able to add another list of fantastic individuals from Geelong to that list and I can’t wait to meet many more members of our community, both here and (hopefully) abroad, in the near future.

A NEW IDEA IN THE PIPELINE

Lastly, we wanted to mention an idea that we are actively working on launching over the coming months.  In short, we are looking at developing a ‘Community Board’ that will work with MStranslate to help us progress and continue to inform and educate people about multiple sclerosis research.  Our thoughts are that the Board will provide feedback on our content and update us on the areas they feel are important for us to cover.  This is just another step in us ensuring that the information we publish is always in-line with the interests of our community.  As well as this, we hope that the Board will act as advocates who will assist MStranslate in finding support that will help us continue to do the work we love and are passionate about.  This idea is still in it’s infancy and we will keep you updated as more decisions are made about how to proceed.  If you have any thoughts or would like to express your interest in participating, please e-mail me at brett@mstranslate.com.au with “Community Board” in the subject line.

Thank you again for all of your support and I can’t wait to provide you with more exciting updates at the end of April.