Dr. Kristina Uban, Assistant Professor in Public Health, and the non-profit FASD Communities are seeking a collaborator with skills to help initiate a social media campaign to help bring awareness of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is the leading cause of learning and memory problems that is completely preventable. Recently, it has been estimated that 1 in 9 babies are born with prenatal alcohol exposure in the US. Yet, still today many people do not know what FASD is, or understand what it means to have FASD. We want to reach women and men of childbearing age, police, judicial system workers, educators, social workers, medical providers, and anyone playing a potential role in an individual’s life with FASD to help increase understanding of this developmental disorder. Many individuals with FASD have other connected physical and mental health problems, trouble with the law and live in foster care or residential systems. Many people are not aware of the risks that come along with an alcohol exposed pregnancy. If they are aware and accidentally exposure their pregnancy to alcohol, they do not know what can be done to help reduce risks moving forward. Most professionals who interact with people with FASD are not aware of FASD, or what to do once they learn someone has FASD. We need this to change.
If you think you’re the right person to help us create a movement of awareness and accomplish what the ice bucket challenge did for ALS, and do it for FASD, please contact kuban@uci.edu. We expect the selected applicant to meet with the FASD Communities Board Members and help them initiate this social media movement. We anticipate working on this as a group for a relatively short amount of time (June – Aug 2019). If a student with skills in marketing with social media is interested in obtaining credit for this project, and a letter of recommendation fro Dr. Uban, we can arrange this. Dr. Uban can cover costs of materials/production to accomplish this goal. We would like to release this FASD awareness campaign for FASD Awareness day in 2019 (Sept 9th – the 9’s representing the months of pregnancy).