That's (not) an easy question

Overview

Project Summary

Infertility affects around 50-60 million couples worldwide and 300,000 in Portugal. In addition to the most obvious consequence, the inability to conceive, this is a disease that also has a significant psychosocial and economic impact.
Understanding the extent of infertility is fundamental to designing appropriate interventions, ensuring fair access to fertility care and mitigating risk factors and their less obvious consequences. Neglecting these aspects could undermine global efforts to defend fundamental human rights.
As with any health problem, it is imperative to know more to overcome the impact of infertility on all fronts, just as immediate action is needed to strengthen global efforts in the prevention, management and treatment of infertility.
In this regard, a better characterization of infertile men is needed, identifying the factors that may be contributing to their infertility. This should be followed by improved seminal analysis, which is intended to be more detailed, guaranteeing better predictive power. Finally, scientific discoveries must be "received" by a society with better reproductive literacy.

Our team focuses on these 3 points, with this specific project focusing on the last front, promoting actions to improve reproductive health literacy.
Our campaign to promote reproductive health literacy includes actions such as lectures and seminars in schools and patient associations, practical activities at science fairs, living science centers and schools.
These actions are aimed at a wide audience, who will certainly benefit from the new knowledge. Finally, we are developing a literacy kit with the support of the Portuguese Fertility Association and UC-Exploratório, with the aim of contributing to the education and awareness of children (and educators) on topics related to reproduction and fertility. By sharing knowledge, we want them to make good and timely decisions in the future and contribute to a more inclusive society with less room for stigma and inequality.

Project Details