My Home, My Health: Place-Based Public Health Resources for Rural Educators

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The proposed project, My Home, My Health: Place-Based Public Health Resources for Rural Educators, will address future bioscience workforce needs by engaging rural underserved youth, improving the teaching skills of informal educators, and leveraging the expertise and research of Montana's NIH- supported scientists. Montana State University in partnership with three tribal colleges -- Salish Kootenai College, Blackfeet Community College, and Chief Dull Knife College -- and researchers of the Montana IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), will build a model for how INBRE networks can train their researchers to create outreach kits with the communities they serve in order to reach underserved youth. Additionally, the project will draw upon the expertise and community contacts of the NIH-funded American Indian / Alaska Native Clinical & Translational Research Program (AI/AN CTRP). My Home, My Health will create a series of hands-on, place-based activity kits that will focus on a broad definition of disease ecology encompassing multidimensional picture of the interplay of abiotic conditions with multiple pathogens and hosts interacting within a whole ecosystem. The project addresses the NIH goal to "foster a better understanding of biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research and its implications" by engaging communities to create regionally relevant hands-on activities that will help to attract underserved audiences to STEM, give youth the opportunity to gain and practice STEM skills relevant to bioscience professions, and enhance educator professional development. The project team will be searching for exemplary practices to improve STEM learning outcomes that can be measured, replicated and disseminated. The project includes INBRE tribal college researchers and afterschool program educators in three targeted communities: The Northern Cheyenne, Blackfeet and Flathead Reservations. My Home, My Health will train 30 INBRE researchers (undergrads, graduate students, and faculty) in science communication and outreach so they can help design and pilot the kits with youth. The project team will also train 50 informal educators from around Montana in how to use the project's lessons, which will improve the educators' content knowledge of disease ecology. In total, the project will impact 2,260 youth, 50 educators and 30 early-career and established researchers. After the SEPA grant is completed, the project model will ultimately become part of Montana INBRE's future training and outreach with 50 INBRE researchers participating each summer. INBRE will use and lend out the kits to educators around the state and continue to create new kits. The project team includes two PIs that are women of color and there are six Native Americans from five tribes acting as staff and/or advisors.