STEM
Team PACT stands for Preventive and Accessible Cervical Cancer Testing and we are an M-HEAL project team partnered with Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana. We have a Research and Development sub-team and a Business sub-team. According to Dr. Asah-Opoku, our clinical advisor who works at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, “Cervical cancer is the commonest gynecological malignancy seen at the Korle Bu Teaching hospital, being reported to make up 64% of gynecological malignancies seen at the hospital.” In Accra, Ghana, only about 2.1% of women have ever had a pap smear. Ghana does not currently have an officially recommended screening measure for HPV testing. Some common testing methods include visual inspection with acetic acid and cytology screenings. However, HPV DNA screenings like our device specifically test for high-risk HPV strains to catch their prevalence before they manifest into cervical cancer. The World Health Organization recommends HPV DNA screenings as the superior method, due to its ease, sensitivity, and preventative nature. Our mission is to develop a method for cervical cancer screening that is effective, non-invasive, and cost-efficient. Our device accomplishes this by collecting urine to be screened for high-risk HPV strains.Our R&D subteam is focused on developing and executing a testing procedure for a device and making improvements to our prototype. Our business subteam is focused on forming new mentor relationships, working with our current partnerships in Ghana, applying for grants, social media, and forming future travel plans. Our team is made up of incoming sophomores, juniors, seniors, and graduate students from LSA, Engineering, and Ross. Our meetings typically involve designing new iterations of our device, reaching out to our mentors, and learning about socially engaged design to make sure that we are positively affecting the community of our end users. We often bring in speakers to host workshops in both technical and non technical aspects of engineering. Last semester, we had a CAD workshop and a workshop on needs assessments from the Center for Socially Engaged Design. Our goal is to help our members progress in all aspects of their engineering so that we can parallelly produce the best product for the community that we work with in Ghana.
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# Science/Technology/Engineering
# Health & Wellness
# Service/Service Learning
