so I’m really excited to be here today
to share a story with you about work
that we’ve been doing to engage high
school science students through
capturing their curiosity and health and
most of what I want to do is I’ll
highlight some of the surprises that we
found along the way
specifically that we think we’re
empowering high school students to
become advocates in their own health so
I just want to get a quick raise of
hands who here in this room cares about
health and diseases excellent
this is cueing me up just perfectly
because we thought that the same thing
must must certainly be true in high
school classrooms as well so about 10
years ago we set out to bring health to
high school science classes to engage
students in science and I just want
everyone here who is maybe a little bit
past high school like me maybe a little
less hair than some others and to think
back to your high school setting and say
okay look to the left look to the right
what do your classmates look like if
you’re in high school this is an easier
job and if you’re younger than that just
imagine some of your science classes and
you may see some faces like this
okay well extreme engagement enthusiasm
and excitement and I had some fantastic
science classes while I was growing up
which is one of the reasons I’m a
scientist right but I also had some
classes that weren’t like that and if
you look in the average high school
science classroom you’re gonna find that
about 66 percent of students find what
they’re learning to be highly valuable
to them that’s a challenge sometimes to
engage the whole room right if you ask
the students okay well what about health
in science we polled students and we
found that about 98% of students highly
value learning about health and science
classes that’s a big difference right at
first when I got this data actually I
thought that something was wrong that
we’ve done something wrong but it
reproduces we’ve seen this in rural
settings and urban settings and in
suburban settings I think health is
really kind of a culturally
cross-cutting an important topic so we
thought all right well let’s bring this
to high school classrooms so in doing
that we realize there are some barriers
normally what is happening at medical
schools biomedical science in Health
Sciences is often in a totally different
location different buildings than high
schools it’s also in a different space
from where teachers tend to learn before
they become teachers and in-service
teachers get professional development
so when we set out to do this we
realized this professional separation is
a challenge so we started talking to
teachers and saying okay what is some of
the challenges to bringing health to
science class and they said well the
textbooks in the curriculum don’t
directly connect the science to the
health and there does very few
professional development opportunities
where I can learn about biomedical and
health topics so we thought all right
well let’s bridge this gap a little bit
let’s bring people together but there’s
another gap there which is a funding gap
and what we realized is that most of the
funding that funds Health Sciences is
very separate from the type of funding
that funds most other science in
education so there’s a gap but we were
really lucky we got an NIH science
education partnership award to help us
work on bridging this gap but we didn’t
know how to do this so what we did is we
took an approach where teachers and
scientists work together in partnership
so over the course of about five years
we built what we call the great diseases
curriculum the great diseases curriculum
covers topics like infectious diseases
neurological disorders metabolic
diseases in cancer it fills a whole year
of in-school learning it’s really really
comprehensive it’s got text books and
powerpoints and video games and labs I
think really a nice a nice testament to
the teacher partners working on the
project and then the goal from the
scientific point of view is all right
well let’s make sure we pick science
that explains real-life experiences
there may be informs health choices so
what does this do what happens when you
bring this to a classroom setting so
just one thing to show you about what
what we think this looks like in
classroom settings we ask the students
what is the first word that comes to
mind when you think about infectious
diseases so these guys just had six
weeks of learning about infectious
diseases and I thought they’d say
something like HIV the plague I don’t
know something infectious right this is
what they most commonly said this is a
Wordle so the size of the word relates
to the frequency the words were used so
those common thing they freehand wrote
was interesting that’s powerful right to
be in a science class and to say that
and actually now when this curriculum is
used around the country and now when I
talk with teachers one of the common
kind of complaints if you want to call
it a complaint is that well my students
get so excited about the topic I’m
actually having kind of a hard time
managing the discussion they want to
know this stuff it’s interesting and I’m
not going to show you day to day about
this but we
also know that this can be taught and
can work for students to learn science
content and problem-solving skills in a
lot of settings but here’s the surprise
and this is the thing that I was so
blown away by when I found this is that
we also ask students about their
confidence to learn about health and
this is what we saw so I’m gonna walk us
through this data and I might tell you
why I think this is so important and
show you what the courses tend to change
so you can see on the bottom about 819
to 1500 students really had low
confidence in their capacity to learn
about health topics and pieceof it’s not
showing up but I can tell you this 400
in the other white box and on the top we
only had 31 students who had really high
confidence and learning about health
topics and this is including students
from some of the most prestigious exam
schools in the country only 31 of those
students thought they could really learn
about health topics so this to put this
in context of why this is so important I
think because we also have another
problem in our country relating to
health literacy health literacy is the
capacity to acquire obtain and
understand health information to learn
about it to synthesize it and then to
eventually make hopefully good health
choices because you know it so we figure
well if you don’t feel like you can
learn it you’re probably not going to
look for it you’re probably not going to
engage with it and it might lead to poor
health outcomes and just to put this on
a scale that might make some sense it’s
highly related to poor health outcomes
it costs at minimum cost our country
about two hundred billion dollars a year
this is a big deal so after taking the
course we went from 31 students who had
high confidence to about 362 students
that have high confidence and the others
are equally distributed you can see the
squares but I just want to draw out
another point here which is it even in
the lowest confident section I had more
resolution err but I broke it down into
four into four quadrants to simplify
even at the lowest level the students
were going doubling or tripling in their
confidence level after taking the
courses so to kind of pull this together
in summary I really think that teaching
health in science classes is really
important for two big reasons one is
that it helps us to engage students in
science it’s a life relevant interesting
topic like we all think it’s highly
engaging and people need to know about
it
and what we were really surprised to
learn is we think this actually might
relate to building health literacy in
students as well so right now what we’re
trying to do is understand
to what extent that confidence might
lead to actually seeking information and
possibly even behavior changes and
health-related outcomes and finally I
have to just give a big plug and say
that I think teacher scientists
partnerships are extremely powerful and
when you bring teachers with knowledge
of how to teach together with scientists
that have cutting-edge knowledge and
life relevant material together they
really can build stuff curricula that
works in classrooms to engage students
to increase performance and I also think
to increase health literacy and students
and maybe even build our biomedical
pipeline a little bit more
[Applause]
to share a story with you about work
that we’ve been doing to engage high
school science students through
capturing their curiosity and health and
most of what I want to do is I’ll
highlight some of the surprises that we
found along the way
specifically that we think we’re
empowering high school students to
become advocates in their own health so
I just want to get a quick raise of
hands who here in this room cares about
health and diseases excellent
this is cueing me up just perfectly
because we thought that the same thing
must must certainly be true in high
school classrooms as well so about 10
years ago we set out to bring health to
high school science classes to engage
students in science and I just want
everyone here who is maybe a little bit
past high school like me maybe a little
less hair than some others and to think
back to your high school setting and say
okay look to the left look to the right
what do your classmates look like if
you’re in high school this is an easier
job and if you’re younger than that just
imagine some of your science classes and
you may see some faces like this
okay well extreme engagement enthusiasm
and excitement and I had some fantastic
science classes while I was growing up
which is one of the reasons I’m a
scientist right but I also had some
classes that weren’t like that and if
you look in the average high school
science classroom you’re gonna find that
about 66 percent of students find what
they’re learning to be highly valuable
to them that’s a challenge sometimes to
engage the whole room right if you ask
the students okay well what about health
in science we polled students and we
found that about 98% of students highly
value learning about health and science
classes that’s a big difference right at
first when I got this data actually I
thought that something was wrong that
we’ve done something wrong but it
reproduces we’ve seen this in rural
settings and urban settings and in
suburban settings I think health is
really kind of a culturally
cross-cutting an important topic so we
thought all right well let’s bring this
to high school classrooms so in doing
that we realize there are some barriers
normally what is happening at medical
schools biomedical science in Health
Sciences is often in a totally different
location different buildings than high
schools it’s also in a different space
from where teachers tend to learn before
they become teachers and in-service
teachers get professional development
so when we set out to do this we
realized this professional separation is
a challenge so we started talking to
teachers and saying okay what is some of
the challenges to bringing health to
science class and they said well the
textbooks in the curriculum don’t
directly connect the science to the
health and there does very few
professional development opportunities
where I can learn about biomedical and
health topics so we thought all right
well let’s bridge this gap a little bit
let’s bring people together but there’s
another gap there which is a funding gap
and what we realized is that most of the
funding that funds Health Sciences is
very separate from the type of funding
that funds most other science in
education so there’s a gap but we were
really lucky we got an NIH science
education partnership award to help us
work on bridging this gap but we didn’t
know how to do this so what we did is we
took an approach where teachers and
scientists work together in partnership
so over the course of about five years
we built what we call the great diseases
curriculum the great diseases curriculum
covers topics like infectious diseases
neurological disorders metabolic
diseases in cancer it fills a whole year
of in-school learning it’s really really
comprehensive it’s got text books and
powerpoints and video games and labs I
think really a nice a nice testament to
the teacher partners working on the
project and then the goal from the
scientific point of view is all right
well let’s make sure we pick science
that explains real-life experiences
there may be informs health choices so
what does this do what happens when you
bring this to a classroom setting so
just one thing to show you about what
what we think this looks like in
classroom settings we ask the students
what is the first word that comes to
mind when you think about infectious
diseases so these guys just had six
weeks of learning about infectious
diseases and I thought they’d say
something like HIV the plague I don’t
know something infectious right this is
what they most commonly said this is a
Wordle so the size of the word relates
to the frequency the words were used so
those common thing they freehand wrote
was interesting that’s powerful right to
be in a science class and to say that
and actually now when this curriculum is
used around the country and now when I
talk with teachers one of the common
kind of complaints if you want to call
it a complaint is that well my students
get so excited about the topic I’m
actually having kind of a hard time
managing the discussion they want to
know this stuff it’s interesting and I’m
not going to show you day to day about
this but we
also know that this can be taught and
can work for students to learn science
content and problem-solving skills in a
lot of settings but here’s the surprise
and this is the thing that I was so
blown away by when I found this is that
we also ask students about their
confidence to learn about health and
this is what we saw so I’m gonna walk us
through this data and I might tell you
why I think this is so important and
show you what the courses tend to change
so you can see on the bottom about 819
to 1500 students really had low
confidence in their capacity to learn
about health topics and pieceof it’s not
showing up but I can tell you this 400
in the other white box and on the top we
only had 31 students who had really high
confidence and learning about health
topics and this is including students
from some of the most prestigious exam
schools in the country only 31 of those
students thought they could really learn
about health topics so this to put this
in context of why this is so important I
think because we also have another
problem in our country relating to
health literacy health literacy is the
capacity to acquire obtain and
understand health information to learn
about it to synthesize it and then to
eventually make hopefully good health
choices because you know it so we figure
well if you don’t feel like you can
learn it you’re probably not going to
look for it you’re probably not going to
engage with it and it might lead to poor
health outcomes and just to put this on
a scale that might make some sense it’s
highly related to poor health outcomes
it costs at minimum cost our country
about two hundred billion dollars a year
this is a big deal so after taking the
course we went from 31 students who had
high confidence to about 362 students
that have high confidence and the others
are equally distributed you can see the
squares but I just want to draw out
another point here which is it even in
the lowest confident section I had more
resolution err but I broke it down into
four into four quadrants to simplify
even at the lowest level the students
were going doubling or tripling in their
confidence level after taking the
courses so to kind of pull this together
in summary I really think that teaching
health in science classes is really
important for two big reasons one is
that it helps us to engage students in
science it’s a life relevant interesting
topic like we all think it’s highly
engaging and people need to know about
it
and what we were really surprised to
learn is we think this actually might
relate to building health literacy in
students as well so right now what we’re
trying to do is understand
to what extent that confidence might
lead to actually seeking information and
possibly even behavior changes and
health-related outcomes and finally I
have to just give a big plug and say
that I think teacher scientists
partnerships are extremely powerful and
when you bring teachers with knowledge
of how to teach together with scientists
that have cutting-edge knowledge and
life relevant material together they
really can build stuff curricula that
works in classrooms to engage students
to increase performance and I also think
to increase health literacy and students
and maybe even build our biomedical
pipeline a little bit more
[Applause]
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