School Health Education Program

1. School Health Education Program Improving health literacy through medical student service-learning Championing health in high schools The School Health Education Program (SHEP) improves adolescent health literacy through creative medical student presentations to high school students. SHEP is a collaborative effort of the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine, Hawaii State Department of Education, U.S. Department of Education, and Pfizer. Medical students learn the importance of literacy to health, become familiar with the Department of Education curriculum on reading, and learn how to communicate with patients with various rates of literacy. Medical students using a game board to reinforce health lessons with a low literate population.

2. School Health Education Program Improving youth health knowledge and decision making Service and research learning opportunities Each year, approximately six hundred high school students receive presentations on diet, exercise, substance abuse, sexual health and violence prevention. The health topics were chosen by the school, allowing faculty to introduce topics of community-based research, instructional methods, ethics, statistical analysis and presentation skills. All students in the program are required to write and present their work to a peer reviewed journal or conference. Dr. Jason Ninomiya presenting his SHEP findings at the School of Medicine Biomedical Symposium.

3. School Health Education Program Health knowledge leads to confidence in decision making Our program has been successful in improving health knowledge and confidence of high school learners. Spring 2003 , high school student percentage of correct answers post the medical student presentation p<.05 Spring 2003, high school student confidence in making health decisions post the medical student presentations. Scale = 1 no confidence, 5 high confidence. P<.05

4. School Health Education Program Medical students gain confidence in providing health education to a diverse and challenging group of learners Medical students reported: • Community service as an important responsibility of physicians, p<.05 • Obligation to help others access and understand health information, p<.05 • Confident in providing clear and concise information when education patients, p<.05 • Comfort in adapting patient education material to communicate across social-economic and educational differences, p<.05 Medical students demonstrating the food pyramid

5. School Health Education Program Developed and funded by educators to promote the importance of health education • SHEP Summary • Developed by request of the Hawaii State Department of Education teachers to provide content experts on health education • Successful pilot led to multi-year, multi-site funding by the U.S. Department of Education • Proven outcomes with peer-reviewed publication and presentation of project outcomes • Service-learning research design leading to replication in other health professional schools “Doctors usually help when patients come to them; to practice social responsibility to community, we need to go to the patients before they are ill, and provide education on prevention and healthy life styles” SHEP medical student, 2004