Casual games are everywhere. People play them throughout life to pass the time, to engage in social interactions, and to learn. However, their simplicity and use in distraction-heavy environments can attenuate their potential for learning. This experimental study explored the effects playing an online, casual game has on awareness of human biological systems. Two hundred and forty-two children were given pretests at a Museum and posttests at home after playing either a treatment or control game. Also, 41 children were interviewed to explore deeper meanings behind the test results. Results show
People of color who live in low income, urban communities experience lower levels of educational attainment than whites and continue to be underrepresented in science at all educational and professional levels. It is widely accepted that this underrepresentation in science is related, not only to processes of historical exclusion and racism, but to how science is commonly taught and that investigating authentic, relevant science questions can improve engagement and learning of underrepresented students. Approaching science in these ways, however, requires new teaching practices, including ways of relating cross-culturally. In addition to inequity in science and broader educational outcomes, people of color from low income, urban communities experience high rates of certain health problems that can be directly or indirectly linked to mosquitoes. Recognizing that undertaking public health research and preventative outreach efforts in these communities is challenging, there is a critical need for an innovative approach that leverages local youth resources for epidemiological inquiry and education. Such an approach would motivate the pursuit of science among historically-excluded youth while, additionally, involving pre-service, in-service, and informal educators in joint participatory inquiry structured around opportunities to learn and practice authentic, ambitious science teaching and learning.
Our long-term goal is to interrupt the reproduction of educational and health disparities in a low-income, urban context and to support historically-excluded youth in their trajectories toward science. This will be accomplished through the overall objective of this project to promote authentic science, ambitious teaching, and an orientation to science pursuits among elementary students participating in a university-school-community partnership promise program, through inquiry focused on mosquitoes and human health. The following specific aims will be pursued in support of the objective:
1. Historically-excluded youth will develop authentic science knowledge, skills, and dispositions, as well as curiosity, interest, and positive identification with science, and motivation for continued science study by participating in a scientific community and engaging in the activities and discourses of the discipline. Teams of students and educators will engage in community-based participatory research aimed at assessing and responding to health and well-being issues that are linked to mosquitoes in urban, low-income communities. In addition, the study of mosquitoes will engage student curiosity and interest, enhance their positive identification with science, and motivate their continued study.
2. Informal and formal science educators will demonstrate competence in authentic and ambitious science teaching and model an affirming orientation toward cultural diversity in science. Pre-service, in-service, and informal educators will participate in courses and summer institutes where they will be exposed to ambitious teaching practices and gain proficiency, through reflective processes such as video study, in adapting traditional science curricula to authentic science goals that meet the needs of historically excluded youth.
3. Residents in the community will display more accurate understandings and transformed practices with respect to mosquitoes in the urban ecosystem in service of enhanced health and well-being. Residents will learn from an array of youth-produced, culturally responsive educational materials that will be part of an ongoing outreach and prevention campaign to raise community awareness of the interplay between humans and mosquitoes.
These outcomes are expected to have an important positive impact because they have potential for improving both immediate and long-term educational and health outcomes of youth and other residents in a low-income, urban community.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine Richardson BrunaLyric Colleen Bartholomay
The lack of diversity in the clinician-scientist workforce is a “very serious concern to the NIH” and to health care professions. Current efforts to broaden participation in STEM fields typically target high school and college-age students. Yet, history and national trends suggest that these efforts alone will not result in rapid or significant change because racial and ethnic disparities are already evident by this time. Children are forming career preferences as early as elementary school, a time when they have little exposure to science and STEM career options. The overall vision of this team is to meet the nation’s workforce goal of developing a diverse, clinician-scientist workforce while meeting the nation’s STEM goals. As a step toward this vision, the goal of This Is How We “Role” is to inspire elementary school students towards careers as clinician-scientists by increasing the number of K-4 students with authentic STEM experiences.
This goal will be attained through two specific aims. The focus of Aim 1 is to distribute and evaluate a K-4 afterschool program across the diverse geographic regions of the US, to support the development of a robust and diverse clinician-scientist workforce. Aim 2 is focused on developing the community resources (afterschool program curriculum, informational books and online certificate program) for promoting health science literacy and encouraging careers in biomedical and clinical research for K-4 students from underserved and underrepresented communities. Combined, these aims will enhance opportunities for young children from underserved communities to have authentic STEM experiences by providing culturally responsive, afterschool educational programs which will be delivered by university student and clinician-scientist role models who are diverse in gender, race, and ethnicity.
Books and an online certificate program about health issues impacting people and their animals (i.e. diabetes, tooth decay) will be developed and distributed to children unable to attend afterschool programs. Further, by engaging veterinary programs and students from across the US, along with practicing veterinarians, this program will examine whether the approaches and curriculum developed are effective across the diverse communities and geographic regions that span the country. Elementary school teachers will serve as consultants to ensure that educational materials are consistent with Next Generation Science Standards, and will assist in training university students and clinician-scientists to better communicate the societal impact of their work to the public.
The program will continue to use the successful model of engaging elementary school students in STEM activities by using examples of health conditions that impact both people and their animals. Ultimately, this project will educate, improve the health of, and attract a diverse pool of elementary school students, particularly those from underserved communities, to careers as clinician-scientists.
Recruiting more research scientists from rural Appalachia is essential for reducing the critical public health disparities found in this region. As a designated medically underserved area, the people of Appalachia endure limited access to healthcare and accompanying public health education, and exhibit higher disease incidences and shorter lifespans than the conventional U.S. population (Pollard & Jacobsen, 2013). These health concerns, coupled with the fact that rural Appalachian adults are less likely to trust people from outside their communities, highlights the need for rural Appalachian youth to enter the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research workforce. However, doing so requires not only the specific desire to pursue a science, technology, engineering, math, or medical science (STEMM) related degree, it also requires the more general desire to pursue post-secondary education at all. This is clearly not occurring in Tennessee’s rural Appalachian regions where nearly 75% of adults realize educational achievements only up to the high school level. Although a great deal of research and intervention has been done to increase students’ interest in STEMM disciplines, very little research has considered the unique barriers to higher education experienced by rural Appalachian youth. A critical gap in past interventions research is the failure to address these key pieces of the puzzle: combatting real and perceived barriers to higher education and STEMM pursuits in order to increase self-efficacy for, belief in the value of, and interest in pursuing an undergraduate degree. Such barriers are especially salient for rural Appalachian youth.
Our long-range goal is to increase the diversity of biomedical, clinical and behavioral research scientists by developing interventions that both reduce barriers to higher education and increase interest in pipeline STEMM majors among rural Appalachian high school students. Our objective in this application is to determine the extent to which a multifaceted intervention strategy combining interventions to address the barriers to and supports for higher education with interventions to increase interest in STEMM fields leads to increased intentions to pursue an undergraduate STEMM degree. Our hypothesis is that students who experience such interventions will show increases in important intrapersonal social-cognitive factors and in their intentions to pursue a postsecondary degree than students not exposed to such interventions. Based on the low numbers of students from this region who pursue post-secondary education and the research demonstrating the unique barriers faced by this and similar populations (Gibbons & Borders, 2010), we believe it is necessary to reduce perceived barriers to college-going in addition to helping students explore STEMM career options. In other words, it is not enough to simply offer immersive and hands-on research and exploratory career experiences to rural Appalachian youth; they need targeted interventions to help them understand college life, navigate financial planning for college, strategize ways to succeed in college, and interact with college-educated role models. Only this combination of general college-going and specific STEMM-field information can overcome the barriers faced by this population. Therefore, our specific aims are:
Specific Aim 1: Understand the role of barriers to and support for higher education in Appalachian high school students’ interest in pursuing STEMM-related undergraduate degrees. We will compare outcomes for students who participate in our interventions, designed to proactively reduce general college-going barriers while increasing support systems, to outcomes for students from closely matched schools who do not participate in these interventions to determine the extent to which such low-cost interventions, which can reach large numbers of students, are effective in increasing rural Appalachian youth’s intent to pursue STEMM-related undergraduate degrees.
Specific Aim 2: Develop sustainable interventions that decrease barriers to and increase support for higher education and that increase STEMM-related self-efficacy and interest. Throughout our project, we will integrate training for teachers and school counselors, nurture lasting community partnerships, and develop a website with comprehensive training modules to allow the schools to continue implementing the major features of the interventions long after funding ends.
This research is innovative because it is among the first to recognize the unique needs of this region by directly addressing barriers to and supports for higher education and integrating such barriers-focused interventions with more typical STEMM-focused interventions. Our model provides opportunities to assess college-going and STEMM-specific self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and barriers/supports, giving us a true understanding of how to best serve this group. Ultimately, this project will allow future researchers to understand the complex balance of services needed to increase the number of rural Appalachians entering the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research science workforce.
The National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN), in association with the Hispanic Communications Network (HCN), proposes to address the shortage of bilingual professionals in all health fields by recruiting and interviewing bilingual role models and arranging to broadcast those interviews nationwide. Leveraging HCN’s nationally broadcast health education radio shows, whose cumulative audiences are larger than
NPR’s “All Things Considered,” this project has the potential to reach one out of every three US Hispanics during its first five years. This media campaign is intended to inspire Hispanic parents to encourage their children to study science and aspire to careers in the biomedical professions. It is also intended to inspire and empower Spanish-speaking adults from all walks of life to consider careers in the health professions. All broadcasts will tie to NAHN’s interactive website so that students and adults interested in changing careers can find mentors and educational resources. NAHN will also use Youtube, Facebook, mobile phone applications, and other new and popular social media technologies to reach a broad cross-section of English speaking youth and young adults. In addition to the national media outputs, attendees at NAHN’s annual conferences will have the opportunity to receive training in public speaking and media relations so they can more effectively use local media in their own communities to address health disparities and promote careers in the biomedical and health professions. NAHN will develop a standardized, bilingual Toolkit for public presentations. The Toolkit will include a PowerPoint presentation embedded with video containing gender and other- stereotype-busting role model interviews with Hispanic nurses; links to an online database of volunteer mentors; and a bilingual terminology packet that will aid nurses in creating linguistic and cognitive bridges between audience and professional knowledge bases. We expect that the refined Toolkit will empower nurses and other health professionals to become more effective public health educators and career role models during their presentations at community health events, career fairs, achievement clubs, and school assemblies. An Advisory Committee of other health organizations, professionals, and advocates will recommend Role Models and provide periodic feedback. Bilingual independent evaluators associated with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health will conduct qualitative and quantitative formative, iterative, and summative evaluations throughout the project. Their recommendations and findings will be incorporated into the project design and deliverables and shared with relevant fields.
Hexacago Health Academy (HHA) is a game-based science and health curriculum intervention. HHA engages high school students in learning about and addressing major sexual and reproductive health issues and risk behaviors. A board game, Hexacago, depicting the city of Chicago with an overlay of hexagons is the cornerstone of HHA. Students use the board design games and think critically about public health problems in the city of Chicago. HHA uses game-play, interaction with STEM science and health professionals, and mentoring to create a rich, game-based learning experience for high school students. The object of HHA is to improve academic performance, increase science and health career interest, and improve health behaviors among youth living in Chicago.
The prioritization of neglected diseases in the policy making framework requires heightened advocacy [WHO, 2006]. Mass media positive publicity is among approaches that can be used to achieve this. This paper discusses practical use of mass media to do publicity and advocacy for a neglected disease and its vector. It uniquely presents online links to the analyzed newspaper and television news and opinion articles on tsetse and Trypanosomiasis. The paper shares entry points into mass media advocacy from a lessons learned perspective and notes the importance of understanding how the mass media
After being cosseted by the media for what they incorrectly considered to be a scientific feat, the author found himself widely boycotted by the more “responsible” media. The reason for this was his critical view of the evolution of science, which he felt had become a tool at the service of innovation, and, therefore, of industrial interests. The traditional image of science, which serves to help us to understand the world, still persists despite being perverted by commercial interests, because it is defended by naive people as well as by lobbies, themselves responsible for this debasement
The representation of self and the nature of our identities often converge through technological forms. This study investigates the promotional techniques of seven companies selling DNA portraits, the objective being to uncover how these images derived from laboratory processes are viewed as valid depictions of the self and scientific knowledge. DNA portraits are revealed as the intertwining of technology and identity through celebrations of the technoself.
The project is the development of a working prototype that demonstrates the humanities ideas, technology, and public outreach for Pox in the City, a Unity 3D strategy game. Pox in the City draws upon a core interpretive framework for medical history, namely that beliefs, practices, and treatment are shaped by the interaction of the healer, the patient, and the disease entity. Players take on the role of a physician who has arrived in Philadelphia just as a smallpox outbreak erupts. Armed only with Edward Jenner’s new vaccination technique, players undertake the challenge of preventing the spread of the disease by persuading patients to be vaccinated. The interactive format will immerse players in the city’s rich history, as they experience the choices made by historical actors and constrained by scientific knowledge and cultural values.
The Mütter Museum will develop a new interactive online exhibit that explores the important role of medicine in American history through its unique collections. In keeping with the museum's broader medical humanities focus, the online exhibit will be presented thematically in a life cycle sequence. Representative objects will include obstetrical forceps, an iron lung, a surgical kit, William Harvey's book on blood circulation De Motu Cordis, eyeglasses, a tooth extractor, and an embalming kit. The museum will also develop a curriculum that addresses national secondary school education standards in history, science, and health by utilizing narrative stories, specimens, models, medical tools, photographs, and texts from collections. Exploring historic events and their health and medical underpinnings through an interesting narrative lens will engage audiences in critical STEM topics by connecting personal stories to the objects actually used to understand disease and heal people.
The Richmond Public Library will create The Richmond Digital Health Literacy Project to provide low-income residents with tools and skills needed to access online information to improve their health. Participants will learn how to gain access to digital reference materials, e-books, mobile library offerings, and other resources. The project will bring together groups of participants around the topic of health information to develop customized online health curricula, provide training to 180 low-income residents in digital health literacy, and supply free broadband and wireless antennae to public computer centers. These activities will enable participants to develop skills and access relevant digital content to improve the health and the overall quality of life of Richmond residents.