Research communication fundingPutting Sound to Research Findings—Dr. Thula Koops on Producing Podcasts

2 May 2023

Photo: HRA

In cooperation with SciPod, Dr. Thula Koops from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf published two of her publications from the research project on sexual pain disorders in women (Entstehungsbedingungen von sexuellen Schmerzstörungen von Frauen). The project was financed through the Hamburg Research Academy support fund for research communication.

How did you come up with the idea for this project?

Sexual pain disorders in women and the conditions that give rise to them have thus far received little attention in research, considering the suffering of the women affected by them. At the same time, those affected sometimes go through years of various examinations and (unsuccessful) treatments until they receive a proper diagnosis. This is emotionally stressful for them and also has consequences for the health-care system. So both researchers and people working in the health-care professions, as well as the general public, should know more about vaginismus and dyspareunia. This is why we want to make our scientific publications on the topic easier to access and to understand. Scientific podcasts are especially good for this. After we had already provided information about the latest research on the SciPod platform, we had the idea of cooperating to produce 2 podcasts.

What are the target groups for the podcasts, and why did you choose this medium?

On the one hand, the podcasts address researchers who want to gain an overview of the findings easily and be able to identify relevant information for their own research quickly; on the other hand, women who are affected and the interested general public should have an opportunity to inform themselves easily about current research on the topic. The episodes are easy to access online, and our cooperation partner SciPod also reaches a lot of people in social media and through the usual podcast providers. Hopefully, we can reach a lot of people this way. At SciPod, there is also a booklet in addition to the podcast so that users can brush up afterwards and inform themselves in various ways.

How did the funding help?

The funding made it possible to produce the podcasts and thus to open up new information channels for the target groups mentioned.

How do you want to use the episodes in the future?

We want to distribute the podcasts ourselves and advertise them when we present the research findings. Our long-term goal is to regularly inform the target groups—also internationally—about the latest research. Therefore, where possible, we want to produce summaries of the findings of new studies that are more accessible to a broad and diverse public than scientific literature is. Producing and distributing the podcasts in this project were an important first step.