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Asthma & the Clean Air Project

How does asthma affect the teenage body?

Instructor

LeAnne Richardson

LeAnne Richardson
Health Science, Schlagle High School
LeAnne.Richardson@kckps.org

Students are challenged to assess the air quality of their home and community and provide remedies to promote community awareness and to help citizens understand the magnitude of the asthma problem.

Main Objectives

  • Analyze the respiratory system as it relates to disease and wellness
  • Compare relationships that exist between body systems
  • Perform a hands-on peak flow meter test, evaluate results, and discuss findings to better understand the respiratory system and asthma
  • Identify the risk factors that contribute to asthma severity
  • Understand health disparities related to asthma in the local community
  • Communicate with community stakeholders to address asthma as a public health issue

Unit Lesson Plan

Unit Overview


Lesson 1: "Field Trip to KUMC"

This lesson will help students explore the role of nurturance on development throughout the lifespan, how infants’ brains develop through their relationship with their caregivers, and how love is expressed in different cultures.

Key Information:

  1. Relationships that we have with other people can have an impact (negative or positive)
  2. Different families express love in different ways. This can vary family to family or culture to culture.
  3. There are types of parent/guardian relationships a person can have

Lesson 1 Resources Packet


Lesson 2: "Asthma Disparities"

This lesson will provide students with a deeper understanding of the types of stress and how they impact the body and its development. With this information, students will be able to better understand how brain connections and how the communication pathways work.

Key Information:

  1. How stress can be useful in some neurological development, but can also degrade development if it is toxic or excessive
  2. The neurological makeup of the brain and how information travels through synapses
  3. The development of a brain from infancy to adulthood

Lesson 2 Resources


Lesson 3: "Asthma, a Body Systems Perspective"

This lesson will provide students with healthy coping strategies to deal with stress. It will illustrate the difference between what constitutes as a health verses unhealthy coping strategy. With this knowledge, students will be able to create a personalized coping strategy and inform members of the community about the pest practices to deal with stress.

Key Information:

  1. Relationships can assist our ability to build resilience
  2. Which ways of stress coping can be labeled as healthy/unhealthy
  3. How you can use the personal strategies of stress coping and implement that into a community setting

Lesson 3 Resources


Lesson 4: "Air Quality Assessment"

This lesson gives students the tools to identify the ways in which the environments they inhabit (home, school, work) have an impact on their ability to thrive. With these tools, the students will begin to create an observation log that focuses on shared or common experiences.

Key Information:

  1. The ethnographic method of collection data from a social environment
  2. How to accurately depict a school climate via a survey of students
  3. What senses are important when observing an environment

Lesson 4 Resources


Lesson 5: "Asthma Advocacy"

This lesson helps the student reflect on their final projects and get feedback from classmates. The students will use this feedback to better enhance their final projects which will be given to Wyandotte High School Administration. Publications will also be made available online (webpage, YouTube videos, podcasts) and throughout the school (pamphlets, posters, flyers).

Key Information:

  1. How to properly present on survey data in a professional setting
  2. Identify what areas need the most improvement in their presentation, and how to implement changes to fix these areas
  3. Evaluate peer work in a constructive but critical way

Lesson 5 Resources

TSCORE-LIFT KS

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