RAPID: Effectively Communicating EBOLA Information to Vulnerable Populations

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CBET 1506883Meiri, Karina F. RAPID: Effectively Communicating EBOLA Information to Vulnerable PopulationsThis proposal is a RAPID response to improve education and communication about preventive measures related to Ebola. It targets 7th-12th grade middle and high school students and their teachers. Concerns about how the response to a disseminated outbreak of Ebola in the US would be managed are legitimate given that even a cursory examination of the Internet reveals the extent that misinformation is driving public awareness. Much of the US population is inadequately equipped to evaluate information provided by the media: More than half has difficulty in understanding and using health information, another segment is inherently suspicious of "official" information and a final segment has limited English language skills. We clearly need alternative routes to communicate critical information that: (a) are managed by scientists and clinicians who understand the nuances of infection and public health and who are able to explain clearly why information and directions can evolve over time, and that (b) occur in interactive settings where misinformation can be directly addressed. The high school classroom is the last place where entire cohorts of the US population gather to learn at the same time without regard to their health literacy, ideology or English language status, providing an ideal venue. This project will be developed by an established curriculum design team of biomedical scientists and Boston Public School teachers who have created a successful curriculum "The Great Diseases" that provides 10th-12th grade students with opportunities to acquire and apply problem-solving skills through collaborative inquiry. We will leverage this experience to generate a stand-alone suite of lessons (1 for middle school and 3 for high school) to address key scientific and public health questions related to Ebola. The project has two key elements: first to provide teachers with a complete platform of educative materials and interactive online support to enable them to implement the lessons in the classroom. Second, to involve families in the learning process so that students can act as a conduit for legitimate information. The resources developed will be freely available and accessible online.The intellectual merit of the project relates to both students and teachers: 1) It provides students will a curated range of up-to-date information within a structure that enables them use active inquiry and problem solving to understand key issues, while teaching them the characteristics of reliable information and how to seek it out. Importantly, we will leverage our previous work with the Great Diseases curriculum that demonstrated how students that are engaged in the material communicate more with their families about the topics they are learning to structure the lessons to include family participation, asking families to evaluate an informational brochure students have created in the language spoken at home. 2) It provides teachers with resources and support in a familiar format, enabling them to effectively transfer this complex, dynamic information to their classrooms. The impact of the project relates to its significant potential for national and international impact. We have actively worked with over 150 teachers and about 12,000 students throughout the US and our approach to teaching and learning has successfully fostered student engagement in disease-related topics, knowledge of the health science underlying disease and healthy behaviors and critical thinking abilities and the improved self-efficacy that is important for continued independent learning. The largest gains were seen in inner city urban public schools and were independent of gender, ethnicity or English language learner status. We have also reached many more: Since 2013 people in 42 US states and 41 countries have accessed our freely available resources. More than 45,000 of these views lasted 2 minutes, an indication of interest. We will leverage the breadth of this impact by providing an interactive blog for FAQs and by asking teachers to upload representative public health brochures to create a freely accessible, vetted, multilingual repository