{"303831":{"#nid":"303831","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Tools For Learning","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBME HealthReach taking education to the clinic and the bedside.\u003C\/strong\u003E \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDurazi Savasir has seen the transformation, when the muddy unfamiliar gives way to comprehension\u2019s dawning. He\u2019s seen it as it happens: the switch going on, revealing the \u201cof course!\u201d moment, illuminated in a child\u2019s face. Savasir has seen it because he helped develop the switch.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cTheir eyes light up and they get excited and you can see the information clicking inside their heads,\u201d says Savasir, one of the undergraduate students helping to teach math and science to young hospitalized patients using their own disease as the impetus and catalyst for learning through a program called BME HealthReach. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBME HealthReach, funded directly through Dr. Wilbur Lam\u2019s NSF CAREER grant (Understanding the Contraction Biomechanics of Platelets at the Single-Cell Level), an educational K-12 outreach program that allows undergrad students (like Savasir) in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) to design interactive teaching modules directed toward in-patients and clinical patients at Children\u2019s Healthcare of Atlanta\u2019s Egleston and Hughes-Spalding hospitals. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cIt\u2019s well known and well documented that chronically ill children are at risk when it comes to school performance, for multiple reasons,\u201d says Lam, an assistant professor and researcher in BME, and a pediatrician who treats patients at Children\u2019s. \u201cThey\u2019re not feeling well, they\u2019re in the hospital quite a bit, missing school days. There are psychological and behavioral issues, all of which put them at risk. The thought we had was, disease and medicine ultimately are at the core of the issue, and these are scientific concepts. So, maybe we can actually enable a child who is chronically ill to leverage their disease to learn about science and math.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELast summer, Lam (principal investigator in BME HealthReach) and Elaissa Hardy (co-investigator) assembled a class of 12 BME undergraduates in a course called BMED 4803, charging them with devising and ultimately implementing a series of interactive activities that would work in a clinical setting, or at a child\u2019s bedside, to spark an understanding of math and science principles. Under Hardy\u2019s direction, the students developed several hands-on activities that have become a hit with young patients battling sickle cell disease. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0022As a practicing pediatric hematologist, I see a lot of patients with sickle cell disease at Children\u0027s, so our obvious initial focus is on that particular disease,\u0022 says Lam. \u0022We plan to expand our reach to cystic fibrosis patients in the fall, and we\u0027ve already spoken with some of the specialists there.\u0022 \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAccording to Hardy, the goal is to turn the disease into a potential learning advantage, into motivation to learn about the scientific processes of their disease, which can spark an overall interest in science. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe ask our undergrads, the teachers in this program, to come up with a way to teach fractions, for example,\u201d Hardy says, explaining a Lego tower contrivance to help explain, say, how a 12-hour day in the hospital is broken up into different parts (meals, examinations, sleep, and so forth). \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENaturally, hospital-based supplies and equipment (such as IV poles and spirometers) are used for some hands-on science and math enrichment, as well as other common educational tools (rulers, calculators, and so forth). Meanwhile, the BME undergrads, or teachers, who have already undertaken a diverse, multi-disciplinary scientific and mathematic curriculum, integrate the concepts they\u2019ve learned into their teaching of young patients, emphasizing that interdisciplinary nature of medicine (biology, physics, chemistry, and math). \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBME HealthReach follows statewide educational standards for K-12 science and math, focusing on topics that include (among other things) cell structure and function, the purpose of major human body organ systems, heredity and evolution. The BME undergrads are helping their young students get a handle on computational skills to solve real-world problems, with the hope, according to Hardy, to \u201cinspire our pediatric patients to become future researchers, physicians, and engineers who, because of their disease, will develop a true passion for science and math.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAlong the way, there is some actual engineering work being done as BME undergrads spend a semester designing and improving different activities that demonstrate processes like oxygen circulation, or allow a child patient to actually make blood. Well, sort of. This is one of the more popular activities. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEach patient\/student makes his own mason jar of blood to take home, to help understand the different parts of blood function: plasma (corn syrup), red and white blood cells (represented by appropriately colored beads) and platelets (pearl-colored beads). When it\u2019s all mixed together, it looks like a mason jar of thick moonshine, swimming with plastic beads. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ENot only does the exercise teach a student about the composition of blood, but there is an opportunity to learn a little bit about sickle cell disease. \u201cOne of the things about sickle cell disease is, these kids need to stay hydrated. They are constantly told to drink more water, drink more fluids, and they don\u2019t typically have a visual for that,\u201d says Hardy, pouring water into one of the mason jars, mixing it up, changing the viscosity of the faux blood. \u201cSee, it can be a powerful visual for a kid.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe pieces and parts of the hands-on tools created by the BME undergrads are simple stuff, made of plastic, laminated visual aids, and odd bits of candy. But they demonstrate essential biological processes: A concave piece of red candy plays a normal, healthy red blood cell, transports an oxygen molecule (a small blue M\u0026amp;M) like it\u2019s supposed to, through a laminated model of the human body; a banana-flavored (and shaped) piece of candy represents the sickle cell, which can\u2019t adequately transport oxygen. It\u2019s a lesson about basic cell function, using a disease the child is living with every day, and a simple, elegant tool. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cThe process of making these activities is a subtle application of the stuff we\u2019ve learned in our engineering classes,\u201d says Savasir, a third-year student majoring in biomedical engineering. He came to the Georgia Institute of Technology with the intention of eventually going to medical school, and biomedical engineering seemed like the perfect undergraduate avenue toward that. But something happened since Savasir signed up for BMED 4803 (i.e., BME HealthReach) last summer. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELike many of his fellow BME HealthReach undergrads, Savasir wanted to be a physician, because when they thought of \u201cmedicine,\u201d the first profession they thought of was, \u201cdoctor.\u201d But all of the face-to-face time with young patients, and the hours spent in research and design, and the hours spent in a hospital setting, have given them something else to think about, something a little bigger. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cAfter all this, I don\u2019t know if I want to go to medical school, because this experience has given me a better feel for academia,\u201d he says. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t turned me off medical school and it hasn\u2019t made me not want to be a doctor. But BME HealthReach has made me reconsider my options. It\u2019s broadened my view.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"BME HealthReach taking education to the clinic and the bedside."}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBME HealthReach taking education to the clinic and the bedside.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"BME HealthReach taking education to the clinic and the bedside."}],"uid":"27195","created_gmt":"2014-06-18 13:32:12","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:16:37","author":"Colly Mitchell","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-06-23T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2014-06-23T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"303851":{"id":"303851","type":"image","title":"Elaissa Hardy, PhD, Co-Investigator in HealthReach, and undergraduate Durazi Savasir.","body":null,"created":"1449244609","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 15:56:49","changed":"1475895009","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:50:09","alt":"Elaissa Hardy, PhD, Co-Investigator in HealthReach, and undergraduate Durazi Savasir.","file":{"fid":"199633","name":"lamwilburhealthreacharticle6.2014.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/lamwilburhealthreacharticle6.2014_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/lamwilburhealthreacharticle6.2014_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1923977,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/lamwilburhealthreacharticle6.2014_0.jpg?itok=QCMPirkx"}},"301291":{"id":"301291","type":"image","title":"Wilbur Lam, MD, PhD - Professor, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech \u0026 Emory University","body":null,"created":"1449244572","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 15:56:12","changed":"1490466440","gmt_changed":"2017-03-25 18:27:20","alt":"","file":{"fid":"199550","name":"lamwilburwipeboard.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/lamwilburwipeboard_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/lamwilburwipeboard_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":785756,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/lamwilburwipeboard_0.jpg?itok=UuIC7rYn"}}},"media_ids":["303851","301291"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/lamlab.gatech.edu\/healthreach.html","title":"Healthreach\/Lam lab website"}],"groups":[{"id":"1292","name":"Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB)"}],"categories":[{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"},{"id":"8862","name":"Student Research"}],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for \u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering \u0026amp; Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}