Lifespan.io's Outreach Experience: How to Reach Millions Instead of Hundreds
Elena Milova
Life Extension Advocacy Foundation/Lifespan.io
In order to bring aging under medical control, we need to develop treatments for each of the aging processes, which begins with cellular and animal testing. Unfortunately, fundamental studies on aging are still inadequately funded, considering their importance, and this situation is primarily caused by a poorly informed public, which does not request the government to provide funding for aging research.
The movement for healthy life extension is mostly represented by small and relatively poorly funded organizations, which do not have enough human or financial resources to run large-scale educational campaigns. Although this seems like a dead end, there are multiple ways to reach millions of people in order to inform them about the promise of rejuvenation research.
There are three strategies to consider.
First, finding partners who need popular science content and already have an audience of several million people. LEAF/Lifespan.io’s collaboration with the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt (7 million subscribers) in 2017 led to the creation of two short movies about rejuvenation biotechnology, and each of these movies, as of now, has more than 4 million views. A collaboration with the YouTube channel Life Noggin (2.4 million subscribers) led to the creation of a short movie about rejuvenation biotechnologies, which has received around 200,000 views within 5 days after its release.
The second fruitful strategy is to educate and support reporters who work with major media companies by providing them with news and reference materials, helping them connect with leading researchers and thought leaders, guiding them through conferences, and even volunteering to make footage for them if they cannot come to an event due to financial limitations. In 2018, Lifespan.io contributed footage featuring experts at the Undoing Aging conference to a longevity program produced by the Russian TV channel Star (Zvezda), which has a potential daily audience of more than 3 million people.
The third proven strategy is to create opportunities to attract audiences from other fields. Though projects of this type are not necessarily directly related to rejuvenation research, they can pay off by supporting scientific progress in general and bringing new members into the community. In 2017 and 2018, Lifespan.io joined the initiative to promote Open Access by interviewing Alexandra Elbakyan, the creator of Sci-Hub, and contributing the footage to Paywall: The Business of Scholarship, a documentary about paywalls in academic publishing. These materials have received tens of thousands of views on LEAF/Lifespan.io's social media pages and elsewhere.
Each of these strategies can be reproduced by the local life extension community without the need for a significant investment of manpower or funds.
Disclosure of interests: The author declares no financial interests related to the presented work.
Life Extension Advocacy Foundation/Lifespan.io
In order to bring aging under medical control, we need to develop treatments for each of the aging processes, which begins with cellular and animal testing. Unfortunately, fundamental studies on aging are still inadequately funded, considering their importance, and this situation is primarily caused by a poorly informed public, which does not request the government to provide funding for aging research.
The movement for healthy life extension is mostly represented by small and relatively poorly funded organizations, which do not have enough human or financial resources to run large-scale educational campaigns. Although this seems like a dead end, there are multiple ways to reach millions of people in order to inform them about the promise of rejuvenation research.
There are three strategies to consider.
First, finding partners who need popular science content and already have an audience of several million people. LEAF/Lifespan.io’s collaboration with the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt (7 million subscribers) in 2017 led to the creation of two short movies about rejuvenation biotechnology, and each of these movies, as of now, has more than 4 million views. A collaboration with the YouTube channel Life Noggin (2.4 million subscribers) led to the creation of a short movie about rejuvenation biotechnologies, which has received around 200,000 views within 5 days after its release.
The second fruitful strategy is to educate and support reporters who work with major media companies by providing them with news and reference materials, helping them connect with leading researchers and thought leaders, guiding them through conferences, and even volunteering to make footage for them if they cannot come to an event due to financial limitations. In 2018, Lifespan.io contributed footage featuring experts at the Undoing Aging conference to a longevity program produced by the Russian TV channel Star (Zvezda), which has a potential daily audience of more than 3 million people.
The third proven strategy is to create opportunities to attract audiences from other fields. Though projects of this type are not necessarily directly related to rejuvenation research, they can pay off by supporting scientific progress in general and bringing new members into the community. In 2017 and 2018, Lifespan.io joined the initiative to promote Open Access by interviewing Alexandra Elbakyan, the creator of Sci-Hub, and contributing the footage to Paywall: The Business of Scholarship, a documentary about paywalls in academic publishing. These materials have received tens of thousands of views on LEAF/Lifespan.io's social media pages and elsewhere.
Each of these strategies can be reproduced by the local life extension community without the need for a significant investment of manpower or funds.
Disclosure of interests: The author declares no financial interests related to the presented work.
