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Examples of learning materials used in the Project HEART curriculum.
Project HEART

By Gabriella Bradberry elementary students had learned from the curriculum. Differences As for the future of Project HEART, there are plans to continue its
in scores between English-speaking and Spanish/Bilingual-speaking implementation at Bob Hope Elementary for next year’s group of 3rd
students were also evaluated. San Antonio has a significant Spanish/ graders. Additionally, as Project HEART works to recruit more volun-
Bilingual-speaking population; therefore, the Project HEART cre- teers, they hope to expand the program to other schools and educate
During the TexMed 2024 conference, BCMS representatives met Project HEART was created to educate and improve the health ators worked to implement a curriculum that was equally accessible even more students
with Cale Perry, a medical student at UT Health San Antonio Long literacy of 3rd graders in San Antonio as an effort to prevent heart and effective for that population. In the pre- and post-surveys of all
School of Medicine. There, Perry had brought a poster summarizing disease. More specifically, Karen Liu, the project’s founder, wanted three subjects, there was not a statistically significant difference in the
Project HEART, a health literacy initiative, for TexMed’s annual Post- to reach areas of San Antonio that do not typically benefit from our median scores of English-speaking versus Spanish/Bilingual-speaking
er Session. The TexMed Poster Session is an opportunity for physicians school’s community projects due to their distance from UTHSCSA. students. This suggests the curriculum had equally effective outcomes Gabriella Bradberry is the Admin/Communication Specialist
and medical professionals to share their successes and breakthroughs Heart disease is very common within the San Antonio population for both of these student groups. for the Bexar County Medical Society.
in improving patient care with their peers from around the state. and can develop for many years before patients experience symptoms.
The team behind Project HEART is a group of first and sec- While its development and progression are multifactorial, the goal
ond-year medical students from both the University of Texas Health of Project HEART was to address some of these factors by educating
Science Center at San Antonio Long School of Medicine and the children on the importance of healthy dietary and exercise practices. Results
University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine. By educating patients at a young age, Project HEART aims to instill
The project was initially started by Karen Liu, a current fourth-year life-long habits that reduce their risk of heart disease and make them
medical student, in the fall of 2022. happier and healthier as a whole.
Project HEART was implemented through a 6-lesson curriculum
at Bob Hope Elementary over the period of six weeks, from October
through mid-November of 2023. Each lesson was approximately an
hour long. The curriculum focused on three primary areas: heart anat-
omy, dietary choices and exercise, with each subject split into two sec-
tions. The medical students also included interactive components to
keep the students engaged and make learning fun. These components
included having the students color diagrams of the pathways of oxy-
genated and deoxygenated blood through the “heart house” (a meta-
phor comparing heart anatomy to the rooms and doors of a home),
building stethoscopes out of paper towel rolls and funnels to listen to
each other’s hearts, and actively doing exercises, such as jumping jacks
and pushups, together as a group.
To record results, the elementary students were surveyed before
and after the lessons to evaluate the change in their knowledge of heart
health. Project HEART focused on evaluating student knowledge of
heart anatomy, nutrition and exercise. In all three subjects, the med-
ical students observed a statistically significant increase in median
Volunteers for Project HEART at Bob Hope Elementary school. scores between the pre- and post-lesson survey, indicating that the

36 SAN ANTONIO MEDICINE • June 2024 Visit us at www.bcms.org 37