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Probability and Public Health – the “Chance the Researcher” Project

How can we best help the Wyandotte Community understand the statistics of their health and overcome the probability of poor health cause by personal choices?

Instructor

Claire Hall

Claire Hall
Health Science Teacher,
Wyandotte High School

Contact: Claire.Hall@kckps.org

Instructor

Jordan Erwin

Jordan Erwin
Math Teacher,
Wyandotte High School

Contact: Jordan.Erwin@kckps.org

Health science class students will explore chronic diseases in Wyandotte County, collect public health data, and create an intervention to educate the members of their community on how to change their behaviors and/or prevent these chronic diseases. In math class, they will be learning about probabilities and statistics, analyzing health data to make decisions and support their interventions, creating surveys, graphing and analyzing data, and creating infographics for their presentation.

Main Objectives

  • Explore chronic diseases in Wyandotte County
  • Collect public health data
  • Learn about probabilities and statistics
  • Create surveys, graph and analyze data
  • Design an intervention to educate the members of their community on how to change their behaviors and/or prevent these chronic diseases
  • Create infographics that displays data to support community interventions.

Project Summary

Student Role: Data Researcher and Reporters

Issue: Personal Choices affect your health. People are not changing their behavior and personal choices to better their health. People do not understand health statistics in context.

Problem/Challenge: We need to understand the data on personal choice health in context in order to make informed decisions about how to address these health concerns. We need to gather data concerning the health of the Wyandotte Community. Using this data we can create a document to synthesize and condense the researched information and statistics in an understandable and approachable format. We need to gather data on what form of marketing/advertisement will be most beneficial to helping the community make changes in their personal choices.

Action Taken: Gather data; Understand probabilities and statistics; Use data and conditional probability to make decisions; Create informational document; Be able to explain health and personal choices using statistics and probabilities in a health fair.

Purpose/Beneficiary: Better personal choices and health in Wyandotte community.

Unit Lesson Plan

Unit Overview


Lesson 1: "Categories and Chance"

This lesson provides students with an introduction to ways of categorizing individuals and different communities for the purposes of conducting research. With this information, students will be able to start observing the differences between Wyandotte and Johnson counties.

Key Activities:

  1. Define what “categories” are and how we can gain information about an individual based on the community that they live in.
  2. Highlight the advantages and disadvantages of using broad ways of categorizing individuals.
  3. How chance and probability can relate to real life events and the validity of probability.

Lesson 1 Resources Packet


Lesson 2: "Research in Health and Your Life"

This lesson gives students greater background on how professionals in the health field can use the skills they are learning in the classroom (ex. probability, chance, statistics). As well, the students will learn that research impact their life in ways they may not be aware of.

Key Points:

  1. What are things in your life that you have no control over? What do you have control over?
  2. What is the role of the researcher in the health field?
  3. What is the purpose of research in the health field

Lesson 2 Resources packet


Lesson 3: "Graphs, Tables, and You"

This lesson will provide the students with a chance to begin developing the skills needed to complete their final project. We will begin looking at several different kinds of graphs and tables and seeing how we can take data from one interpretation and put it into another. Then we will connect this to how health related subjects can be summarized in a table or graph, and how that points to health disparities.

Key Points:

  1. How to read a table, graph, or report to understand the key points and trends that are being illustrated.
  2. How to take data from one representation (ex. table) and put that into a different representation (ex. graph).
  3. The different types of graphs, and how they can be used for different situations.

Lesson 3 Resources packet


Lesson 4: "Two-Way Today"

This lesson presents students with another way of illustrating data in the form of a two-way frequency table. They will learn how to create one, how they are useful, and how they can be used to make predictions.

Key Points:

  1. Understand what a two-way frequency table is, and how to use one to illustrate a set of data
  2. Illustrate the importance of asking questions when conducting any form of research (ex. informal, formal, etc.)
  3. Show how data can or cannot point to trends, and the factors that influence this

Lesson 4 Resources packet


Lesson 5: "Unit Project Introduction"

This lesson provides students with a clear outline of summative assessment for the unit. We will discuss how this unit ties into other classes that are focusing on similar issues regarding health concerns within their communities. Then we will discuss how the students will use the skills that they acquire throughout the unit to address a research question they generate.

Key Points:

  1. The expectations for the unit project and what needs to be addressed within it
  2. The various health issues that are prevalent within the Wyandotte area
  3. How to formulate and carry out a study

Lesson 5 Resources packet


TSCORE-LIFT KS

University of Kansas Medical Center
TSCORE-LIFT KS
3901 Rainbow Boulevard
Kansas City, KS 66160
913-588-5000