During the course of the project, curriculum and related activities were developed and tested with students in the areas of infectious diseases/HIV, mental health, cancer, environmental health, and physical fitness. Activities are designed to stimulate student discussion and debate about issues in biomedicine. The resulting curriculum is available for free download. This curriculum is recommended for use with students in grades 9-12.
HIV & Infectious Disease
Many of the misconceptions regarding infectious diseases are addressed in this curriculum, including: types of infectious diseases, the contagious nature of infectious diseases, symptoms of different infectious diseases and how to treat different infectious diseases.
Learning about one's health and ways to prevent injury is essential to living a healthy life. Students create their own fitness and nutrition plan, and learn methods to prevent and treat injury when engaging in physical activity.
The environment affects everyone's health and daily life. Students focus on the steps they can take to make their environment healthier for themselves and other living organisms.
This course addresses the sensitive topic of mental health by engaging students in activities to educate them on the different types of mental illnesses, methods of approaching someone with a mental illness, systems to maintain their own mental health, and resources to use for themselves and others who may be suffering from a mental illness.
This complex topic is broken down into learning about the general characteristics of cancer, specific symptoms and treatments for different types of cancer and ways to emotionally deal with cancer.