Science Take-Out Kits for Environmental Health Education

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ABSTRACT Nearly 25 percent of death and disease, worldwide, is linked to environmental factors (WHO, 2006); therefore, it is critical that the general public has a basic understanding of how the environment affects their health and how they might protect themselves against environmental exposures. Unfortunately, environmental health is typically covered minimally, if at all, in secondary school classrooms (Martina, 2009) and there are few currently available hands-on activities that engage the general public in learning about important concepts related to environmental health. This proposed Phase II STTR project will involve a partnership between:  Science Take-Out, a small business that creates and manufactures “lab in a bag” science kits.  The Community Outreach and Engagement Core of University of Rochester's Environmental Health Sciences Center, in collaboration with community outreach professionals from the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas Medical Branch, and West Harlem Environmental Action. This collaborative project will expand on our successful STTR Phase I project in which we developed and pilot tested eight hands-on Science Take-Out kits on topics in environmental health science (EHS) that can easily be introduced into science teachers' existing curricula. These EHS kits combine the “lab in a bag” features common to all Science Take-Out kits with activities that engage students in learning important concepts in EHS such as: effects of environmental agents on body systems and biological processes; changes in susceptibility to environmental agents at different life stages, and; prevention of environmental exposures. In this Phase II STTR project we plan to: 1. Develop valid/reliable pre/post tests for each EHS kit. We will then use the pre/post tests to determine the impact of the kits on high school students' understanding of EHS concepts. 2. Modify the EHS kits to create “Community EHS” kits for use in community outreach settings. 3. Develop and evaluate workshop materials that will be used by “peer-presenters” to increase teacher and community outreach capacity for using hands-on EHS educational materials. This project is significant because it will build the capacity of teachers and community educators to use hands- on activities to increase the environmental health literacy of students and diverse informal learners. This proposed project is innovative because: (1) The Science Take-Out kit activities use science process skills to increase learners' understanding of EHS concepts; (2) The fully assembled kits make hand-on EHS activities easy, economical and convenient for educators to implement, and; (3) We will specifically tailor our “Community EHS” kits to make them appropriate for use by community outreach groups, thus increasing the capacity to engage the general public in hands-on EHS learning.