How to Get Involved
Brain Awareness Week is an opportunity to educate, promote, advocate for, and support brain science and research.Explore these tools and resources to share your discoveries with the public.
Education
Share information that is relevant, informative, and engaging.
- Join the Find a Neuroscientist Network. Get students, educators, seniors, families, and the general public excited about brain science and new developments.
- Organize a visit to a local school.
- Enhance your outreach by exploring lesson plans and hands-on activity ideas on BrainFacts.org.
- Launch or volunteer at a local Brain Bee.
- Offer local businesses a workshop to raise employees' awareness about brain function, fitness, and disease.
Promotion
Get the word out.
- Incorporate the official BAW logo in your materials. Visit www.dana.org/brainweek for more information and promotion ideas.
- Write an op-ed piece or letter to the editor about an important brain science issue.
- Send out a press release about Brain Awareness Week.
- Use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to promote the Brain Awareness Campaign.
- Alert local schools to upcoming BAW events and encourage field trips to your event.
- Post announcements on community calendars and at local businesses.
- Present a poster of your activities at the Brain Awareness Campaign Event as the SfN annual meeting.
Advocacy
Inform policymakers and elected officials.
- Sign up for the SfN Advocacy Network Newsletter to get an overview of political developments affecting the science community and learn about upcoming advocacy opportunities.
- Invite local politicians — governor, state and federal legislators — to participate in Brain Awareness Week events. Emphasize the need for funding.
- Meet with members of Congress to advocate for increased funding.
- Write to your legislators. Read SfN’s tips for writing to legislators.
- Seek opportunities to communicate with the public about successful brain research. Use the scientifically-vetted articles on BrainFacts.org as support.
- If you use animal models in your research, promote the promise of this research to policymakers. Review Animal Research Success Stories on BrainFacts.org.
- Work with an advocacy group in your area of interest. Many are eager to pair their experience with a scientist’s expertise. Invite a patient to speak with you and demonstrate the real-life effects of neurological disorders.
Support
For a successful program, you need community support and sponsorships.
- Work with your local SfN Chapter to apply for grants to fund Brain Awareness Week activities.
- Seek corporate sponsorship from companies with a vested interest. Think about community members indirectly involved in brain safety and awareness, such as insurance agencies and pharmaceutical companies.
- Ask for tangible donations: Bike helmets, books, and t-shirts about the brain can be given to Brain Awareness Week attendees.
- Involve enthusiastic graduate students from local colleges and universities.
- Leverage SfN resources for information: BrainFacts.org, the companion Brain Facts book, Neuroscience Core Concepts, and Educator Resources.
- Build partnerships with your city or town's Chamber of Commerce, Council, or Rotary Club.
Get Creative
Celebrate brain awareness through music, dance, and art.
- Organize a film festival at a local movie theater, science museum IMAX, or school auditorium featuring movies about the brain.
- Develop clever graphics and audiovisual aids to explain the brain. Engage your audience with animated graphics, analogies using simpler systems, or hands-on activities.
- Contact advocacy groups in your area to see if they have connections to patients with a brain disorder who are artists.
- Arrange for student musicians to perform before a school-sponsored brain awareness lecture and tie their performance into a neuroscience topic like the effect of music on the brain.
- Host a literary or fine art competition asking for artwork, poetry, or essays centered on themes of the brain, consciousness, or neurological disorders.
- Ask your local library to organize a BAW display with books and reference material about the brain, or offer to set up your own display.
- Create an educational video and submit it to the Brain Awareness Video Contest on BrainFacts.org
