The Own It! Handbooks are guide books for a transformative after-school, trauma-informed enrichment program. The 21st Century Health  Challenges & Inequities handbook provides  lessons & activities about essential elements of the American health and healthcare system. In 2020, the strengths and weaknesses of American health care were brought powerfully into each home by  the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Like  prior 20th century health crises --the 1918 flu, polio,   AIDS -- COVID-19 represented a fundamental challenge to all Americsans. This Handbook seeks to help us better understand how our healthcare systems can better serve the American people.Own It! also nurtures academic skills, personal growth and leadership. It uses history to connect our past to our future, as part of the Own Your History® (OYH) Collection. But Own It! is not “school” and it differs from traditional approaches to history.  

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Vitamin D guidelines are currently in a state of paralysis. The problem: the numerous competing ways of measuring levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D, a slightly modified form of vitamin D in the body. This lack of standardization has produced three conflicting sets of guidelines for defining vitamin D status across the globe, those from the UK, the US, and the Endocrine Society. The guidelines from the UK and US set similar standards, defining vitamin D deficiency as 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations less than 10 to 12 nanograms per milliliter. This is the standard typically adopted by government-sponsored committees. Non-governmental organizations, however, tend to adopt the guideline set by the Endocrine Society, which defines deficiency as 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations less than 20 nanograms per milliliter. Despite a wealth of data on vitamin D and how to measure it, a worldwide consensus on determining vitamin D status remains elusive..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This 20-minute video, produced by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, describes adaptation strategies undertaken by several groups and nations in response to rising sea level and other aspects of climate change.

As emissions of heat-trapping bases accumulate in our atmosphere, Earth's polar regions are warming more quickly than at lower latitudes. The rapid environmental changes that result from this warming can have a significant impact on the physical and mental health of rural Alaskans: unpredictable weather and changes in the seasons have made harvesting food more difficult, hazardous, and stressful. The risk of physical injury has also increased, as poor ice, extreme weather, and coastal erosion bring new travel hazards. Increasingly difficult harvest conditions for fish, shellfish, berries, caribou, and sea mammals have also increased concerns about food security. Additionally, declines in snow pack, the threat of drought, changes in lake and river conditions, and damage and disruptions to community water systems have prompted concerns of water security. The climate-related challenge faced by Alaska’s tribal health system is to recognize new health stressors and community vulnerabilities, and then find healthy adaptation strategies in an increasingly uncertain future.

​The aim of this book is to provide a one-stop repository for first-hand evidence on COVID, eliminating concerns about payments and subscriptions for people in developing countries. This activity is aligned with SDG3-Good Health and Well-Being, SDG4 – Quality Education, SDG9-Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, SDG10-Reduced Inequality, and SDG17-Partnerships for the Goals.

SYNOPSIS: This lesson introduces the connections between air quality and environmental justice.

SCIENTIST NOTES: This lesson illustrates how air quality is related to cardiorespiratory health and how environmental injustice exacerbates these issues in marginalized communities. A well-sourced list of resources is provided where students can learn about human respiration, environmental justice, air quality in New Jersey, and what is being done to address environmental injustice by both the state and the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance. Students are tasked with reviewing these sources and then sharing what they learned in a fishbowl discussion. This lesson is recommended for teaching.

POSITIVES:
-This lesson utilizes student choice, active listening, and active participation.
-Students are guided through a Fishbowl discussion which facilitates respectful listening and exchanging of opinions.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-Teachers should feel comfortable offering choice, allowing students independence and autonomy in their learning. This lesson encourages open conversation and monitoring regarding student held discussions.
-This resource is helpful for facilitating a Fishbowl discussion.
-Students will need access to the Teacher Slideshow in order to conduct their independent work.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Students are able to work at their own pace and order for the playlist activity, but teachers can scaffold certain steps for students who need additional support.
-Teachers can create a sample guide for the independent playlist activity.
-Teachers can embed the necessary adjustments into the playlist and check boxes for students with special needs or considerations.
-Teachers can add a sixth check box that includes a chat with the teacher so that questions and checks for understanding can be incorporated.

This video discusses ways that communities can prepare for air quality changes that will occur due to rising global temperatures.

This video production is a part of a four-panel report from the National Academies' America's Climate Choices project. The video maps out the realm of our accumulated knowledge regarding climate change and charts a path forward, urging that research on climate change enter a new era focused on the needs of decision makers.

These 3 lessons are for high ABE/low ASE students at a level D-E Reading level to practice identifying key points in video and text and analyzing the causes and effects of social issues, and identifying solutions to these problems. By watching two short videos and reading EPA materials on the effects of lead exposure and a short article on the specific drinking water crisis in Flint, MI, students will examine key issues, analyze the problem and its causes, identify approaches to solving this problem and ones like it in other locations, and apply this approach to other scenarios that are relevant to their immediate lives.

This activity covers the causes, effects, and mitigation of urban heat in New York City. Students use data sets, graphs, maps and images to create their own plan for mitigation in their area. Robust satellite images, city data, tables, maps, and graphs are included in the resource for students to explore.

Living Atlas Indicators of the Planet provide the user with up-to-date data, maps, graphs, charts, animation and other visuals to explore the science of climate and environmental change. 18 indicators from Air Quality to Women in Parliament can be explored.

This easy-to-understand video animation describes drought and explains the different categories of drought used by the drought monitor. It discusses the effects of and contributions to drought, what the implications of the different drought levels are, and puts the drought maps into context to understand how the impacts vary geographically (e.g. drought in Nevada vs Kansas - one could affect tourism, the other agriculture). It also touches on how the development of maps/drought severity is determined and how it might vary geographically. The animation provides a basic overview of statistics and percentiles and the concept of '100 year events.'

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"HIV infection remains unacceptably common among women in sub-Saharan Africa. One possible contributing factor is the composition of the vaginal microbiota, as African, Caribbean and other Black (ACB) women have an increased rate of bacterial vaginosis (BV), which is associated with increased HIV risk. Targeting the vaginal microbiota and treating BV could help prevent HIV among women. In the absence of BV, the vaginal microbiota is predominated by one of several _Lactobacillus_ species that provide different levels of BV and HIV protection. _L. crispatus_ is associated with exclusion of BV-associated bacteria and reduced HIV risk while _L. iners_, the most common species among ACB women, seems less protective. The reduced protection provided by _L. iners_ is supported by genomic differences, such as the absence of a gene encoding an HIV-trapping D-lactate isomer and the presence of genes encoding pro-inflammatory cytotoxins..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This set of interactive data visualizations show the weather and climate events that have had the greatest economic impact on the US from 1980 to 2016.

This course does not seek to provide answers to ethical questions. Instead, the course hopes to teach students two things. First, how do you recognize ethical or moral problems in science and medicine? When something does not feel right (whether cloning, or failing to clone) — what exactly is the nature of the discomfort? What kind of tensions and conflicts exist within biomedicine? Second, how can you think productively about ethical and moral problems? What processes create them? Why do people disagree about them? How can an understanding of philosophy or history help resolve them? By the end of the course students will hopefully have sophisticated and nuanced ideas about problems in bioethics, even if they do not have comfortable answers.

In this activity, students construct "flying birds" (pollution collectors) from paper and wire hangers. Students hang up their birds to see how they react to air pollution, and compare and make observations about the differences in the birds.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, continues to course through communities around the world. While researchers have learned enough about the virus to build defenses, much remains unknown about how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with the immune system to cause disease. One promising target researchers are exploring is a process known as “T cell exhaustion.” During infection, disease-fighting T cells are recruited to areas where inflammation is taking place. These cells are virus-specific and represent one of the most critical defenses against SARS-CoV-2. Some patients with COVID-19, however, show significantly reduced T cell counts, impairing their ability to fight the disease. Although it’s unclear how T cell exhaustion occurs, numerous potential biomarkers of this process do exist. Among these is the protein PD-1, which helps T cells identify cells as friend or foe..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Building on lessons learned over several summers, Kristin Raab—Health Impact Assessment and Climate Change Program Director in the Environmental Health Division of Minnesota’s Department of Health—packaged information from diverse communities into a cohesive toolkit that communities of all sizes can use to prepare for heat waves. The Minnesota Extreme Heat Toolkit describes changing weather conditions in Minnesota, the magnitude of potential health consequences from extreme heat, and key steps communities can take to prevent heat-related illnesses and deaths. The toolkit acknowledges that extreme heat response plans will vary with the size of the community and the habits of its residents: examples from the mostly rural Olmsted County and the urban centers of Saint Paul and Minneapolis illustrate a range of community plans that could be useful in Minnesota and beyond.

This is a unit plan covering the history of the surgery. It is designed to take about 35 days (50-minute class periods). This unit is based on the book, The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris. For each of the chapters, vocab activities, pre-reading activities, and reflection questions have been created. A final project is included at the end of the unit. To grade this unit, the book is chunked into Portfolios (Prologue to Chapter 4, Chapters 5-8, Chapter 9 to Epilogue), which are designed to be the formative grades. Each of these Portfolios has a Portfolio Checksheet, which is a list of assignments that must be turned in for that unit. The Portfolios can be returned to the students and used on the final project. The final project is the summative grade for the unit. Quizzes could be added to this unit to increase the number of summative grades. To make this unit easier to facilitate, I would suggest purchasing the Audio Book, along with the hardcopies to help read to the class.

This task was developed by high school and postsecondary mathematics and health sciences educators, and validated by content experts in the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and the National Career Clusters Knowledge & Skills Statements. It was developed with the purpose of demonstrating how the Common Core and CTE Knowledge & Skills Statements can be integrated into classroom learning - and to provide classroom teachers with a truly authentic task for either mathematics or CTE courses.