Public health summer program increases STEM career interests in high schoolers
Researchers say the program motivated students to pursue STEM careers
2021-07-20
(Press-News.org) High school students who participated in summer programs about public health increased their interest in pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), according to a Rutgers study.
Published in the journalPedagogy in Health Promotion, the study explored whether increasing public health awareness would motivate high school students to pursue public health careers.
Researchers found that the summer program, Public Health: Outbreaks, Communities, and Urban Studies (PHocus) offered in 2018 and 2019 increased the students' knowledge in public health, epidemiology, urban public health and global public health.
"Including interdisciplinary, authentic learning experiences in our summer program enabled students to personally connect public health disciplines with their personal experiences, as well as with population health in general," said Laura E. Liang, co-director of the PHocus Summer Experience and associate dean of academic affairs at the Rutgers School of Public Health.
While the students who went through the course in 2018 researched the 2018 influenza pandemic and those in 2019 investigated measles outbreaks in 2019, Liang says she expects future groups to examine public health through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"These personally relevant topics, supplemented by exposure to academic research practices, not only personally interested students but also aided in student learning and retention," she said.
Researchers, who point to a decline in an interest in the STEM field by middle and high school students, developed the summer program to address these issues and offer students seeking health science careers alternatives beyond becoming doctors or nurses.
Researchers said 130 students from 63 high schools participated in the week-long program, which provided insights into college plans, helped set professional goals and offered tips to taking control of their own health.
The students gave the program, which provided an overview of public health, epidemiology, and health issues particularly relevant to adolescents, such as sleep hygiene, alcohol and tobacco, as well as the careers available in the field, a 100 percent rating. More specifically, nearly 90 percent of participants in the Summer 2018 cohort and 96 percent of participants in the Summer 2019 cohort felt PHocus provided valuable insight that will assist in their collegiate and career planning. Further, approximately 65 percent of participants from each summer cohort strongly agreed that PHocus provided high-quality information and strategies.
"Through our integration of current public health faculty and community sector partners, students can create interpersonal connections with public health professionals while also experiencing these professions through their immersion in simulations and activities," said Marian Passannante, co-director of PHocus and associate dean for Education Program Development and Global Programs at the Rutgers School of Public Health. "This allows students to explore the breadth of career opportunities in public health and encourages them to begin to think about their future."
Researchers said the easily replicable program demonstrated the value in hosting similar summer programming at other institutions to address students' declining interest in STEM fields.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-07-20
ROCHESTER, Minn. ? Using data from 9,859 COVID-19 infections, Mayo Clinic researchers have new insights into risk factors for younger populations, some of which differ significantly from their older counterparts. People younger than 45 had a greater than threefold increased risk of severe infection if they had cancer or heart disease, or blood, neurologic or endocrine disorders, the research found. These associations were weaker in older age groups. The study was published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
The research team studied people living in a 27-county region of Southeast Minnesota and West Central Wisconsin surrounding Mayo Clinic in Rochester diagnosed with COVID-19 between March and ...
2021-07-20
In the largest study of its kind, an investigation by UC San Francisco has found no evidence that moderate coffee consumption can cause cardiac arrhythmia.
In fact, each additional daily cup of coffee consumed among several hundred thousand individuals was associated with a 3 percent lower risk of any arrhythmia occurring, including atrial fibrillation, premature ventricular contractions, or other common heart conditions, the researchers report. The study included a four-year follow up.
The paper is published July 19, 2021, in JAMA Internal Medicine.
"Coffee is the primary source of caffeine for most people, and it has a reputation for causing or exacerbating arrhythmias," said senior and corresponding author Gregory Marcus, MD, professor ...
2021-07-20
It is a scenario familiar to anyone who has driven down a crowded, narrow street. Parked cars line both sides, and there isn't enough space for vehicles traveling in both directions to pass each other. One has to duck into a gap in the parked cars or slow and pull over as far as possible for the other to squeeze by.
Drivers find a way to negotiate this, but not without close calls and frustration. Programming an autonomous vehicle (AV) to do the same -- without a human behind the wheel or knowledge of what the other driver might do -- presented a unique challenge ...
2021-07-20
Wind energy is of outstanding importance to the energy transition in Germany. According to the Federal Statistical Office, its share in total gross electricity production of about 24% is far higher than those of all other renewable energy sources. "To reach our climate goals, it is important to further expand these capacities and to replace as much coal-based power as possible," says Professor Wolf Fichtner from KIT's Institute for Industrial Production (IIP). "However, there is considerable resistance, especially in beautiful landscapes." A team of researchers from KIT, the University of Aberdeen, and the Technical University of Denmark has now calculated what this means for the costs ...
2021-07-20
The photovoltaic effect of ferroelectric crystals can be increased by a factor of 1,000 if three different materials are arranged periodically in a lattice. This has been revealed in a study by researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). They achieved this by creating crystalline layers of barium titanate, strontium titanate and calcium titanate which they alternately placed on top of one another. Their findings, which could significantly increase the efficiency of solar cells, were published in the journal Science Advances.
electric crystals do not require a so-called pn junction to create the photovoltaic effect, in other words, no positively and negatively doped layers. This makes it much easier to produce ...
2021-07-20
A study led by D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, director of thoracic oncology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and CU Cancer Center member, has helped to define MET amplification as a rare but potentially actionable driver for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Camidge says many of the major developments in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer have come from defining molecularly specific subsets of the disease for which researchers have been able to develop targeted treatments. Until now, all of these subsets have been based on either genetic mutations or gene rearrangements ...
2021-07-20
As multicellular life relies on cell-cell interactions, it is not surprising that this is not always peaceful: cells with higher fitness eliminate cells with lower fitness through cell competition. Cell competition has emerged as a quality control mechanism and occurs when cells differ, genetically or otherwise, from each other. In mammals, the process of cell competition has been observed e.g., in cancer, during organ homeostasis, and during development as a process to select the fittest cells in the embryo and the adult. However, the features that distinguish "winner" from "loser" cells and whether there are key determinants for cell competition in various biological ...
2021-07-20
PULLMAN, Wash. - When it comes to craft beer, the flavor doesn't have to be all in the hops. As a panel of amateur beer tasters at Washington State University recently demonstrated, malted barley, the number one ingredient in beer besides water, can have a range of desirable flavors too.
Researchers recruited a panel of about 100 craft beer drinkers to taste some so-called SMaSH beers--those brewed with a single barley malt and single hop. All the beers contained the same hop variety, called Tahoma, but each had a malt from a different barley genotype, or genetic makeup. Trained tasters can distinguish these easily, but even the untrained ...
2021-07-20
An international group of researchers representing thousands of coral scientists across the globe is calling for new commitments and actions by the world's policymakers to protect and restore coral reefs.
In a paper presented July 20 at the International Coral Reef Symposium, the scientists said that the coming decade will likely offer the last chance for policymakers at all levels to prevent coral reefs "from heading towards world-wide collapse."
The paper, developed by the International Coral Reef Society, pushes for three strategies to save the reefs: addressing climate change, improving local conditions and actively restoring coral. ...
2021-07-20
The female tsetse fly, which gives birth to adult-sized live young, produce weaker offspring as they get older, and when they feed on poor quality blood.
The study, carried out by researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Oxford and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, was designed to measure how tsetse offspring health is influenced by their mothers' age, and how factors such as the mother's nutrition and mating experience might come into play.
In many animals, females show signs of reproductive ageing - where offspring health declines with maternal age - but there is huge variation within species in how rapidly this ageing occurs.
Scientists found that female tsetse that experience ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Public health summer program increases STEM career interests in high schoolers
Researchers say the program motivated students to pursue STEM careers
