School Health Education Program

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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.
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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.
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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 plt.05
Spring 2003, high school student confidence in
making health decisions post the medical student
presentations. Scale 1 no confidence, 5 high
confidence. Plt.05
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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, plt.05
• Obligation to help others access and understand
  health information, plt.05
• Confident in providing clear and concise
  information when education patients, plt.05
• Comfort in adapting patient education material
  to communicate across social-economic and
  educational differences, plt.05

Medical students demonstrating the food pyramid
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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