Establishing Evidence-Based Curricula for Evolutionary Medicine

进化是生物学的基础。尽管生物学专业的本科生通常有兴趣从事医学和相关健康领域的职业，但他们可能没有机会在医学背景下进行进化思维。进化在医学研究和医学教育中一直被忽视，导致许多医学专业人员对人类生物学的理解不完整。进化医学是一个新兴的跨学科领域，它将进化理论应用于人类健康和理解我们对疾病的脆弱性。这一观点对包括老龄化、癌症、传染病、心理健康和生殖健康在内的几乎所有主要健康领域都作出了独特贡献。然而，很少有资源可以帮助大学教师教授对人类健康至关重要的进化论的应用。该项目旨在为大学教师提供资源，以加强进化论的教学，这是生物学的核心概念，与计划从事与人类生物学相关职业的学生最相关的方式。这个项目的智力价值在于建立了一套资源，可以帮助进化医学教师以循证的方式进行教学：1)阐明进化医学的核心原则和进化医学课程的学习目标；2)根据学生对进化医学的误解开发有效的测试，教师可以使用这些测试来准确衡量学生在进化医学中的学习情况；3)创建和管理开放获取的循证教学资源和材料。这些资源将为进化医学教师提供他们所需要的教学工具，以学生为中心，积极的学习方式与明确的学习目标相一致，并衡量他们的教学对学生学习的影响。这些资源将被打包以广泛传播，以便对对医学和相关健康感兴趣的本科生产生最大的影响。该项目由生物科学理事会、环境生物学司和教育和人力资源理事会、本科教育司共同资助，作为其应对《本科生物学教育的愿景与变革：行动呼吁》（http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/）所提出的挑战的努力的一部分。

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/).