Establishing Evidence-Based Curricula for Evolutionary Medicine

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Evolution is foundational to biology. Although undergraduate biology majors often have interest in pursuing careers in medicine and allied health, they may not have opportunities to engage in evolutionary thinking in the context of medicine. Evolution has historically been neglected in medical research and medical education, leaving many medical professionals with an incomplete understanding of human biology. Evolutionary medicine is a growing transdisciplinary field that applies evolutionary theory to human health and understanding our vulnerability to diseases. This perspective has made unique contributions to almost all major areas of health, including aging, cancer, infectious disease, mental health, and reproductive health. However, few resources exist to help college instructors teach the applications of evolution that are critical for human health. This project aims to provide college instructors with the resources to enhance the teaching of evolution, a core concept of biology, in ways that are of most relevance to students who are planning on careers related to human biology. The intellectual merit of this project is to establish a suite of resources that can help evolutionary medicine instructors teach in evidence-based ways: 1) articulating the core principles of evolutionary medicine and learning goals for evolutionary medicine courses, 2) developing validated tests based on student misconceptions in evolutionary medicine that can be used by instructors to accurately measure student learning in evolutionary medicine, and 3) creating and curating open-access evidence-based teaching resources and materials. These resources will provide evolutionary medicine instructors with the tools they need to teach in student-centered, active learning ways aligned with defined learning goals and measure the impact of their instruction on student learning. These resources will be packaged for broad dissemination to have the largest impact on undergraduate students interested in medicine and allied health.This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Environmental Biology and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/).