Students should not have to wait until graduate school to learn about the science of epidemiology.
This is the shared conviction of the members of the Epidemiology Education Movement, a small but growing group of epidemiologists, educators, public health professionals, and curriculum developers from government, business, and academia in Canada and the United States who have joined together to promote the teaching of epidemiology and public health science in middle and high school. If you visit the Movement Web site at <http://www.montclair.edu/detectives/EpiEdMovement/>, you will find a list of the Top 8 Reasons for Teaching / Learning Epidemiology. In reverse order (David Letterman-style), they are:
8. Introduces students to an array of career paths related to the
public's health.
7. Provides students with another mechanism for exploring important, real world questions about their health and the health of others.
6. Expands students' understanding of scientific methods and develops critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
5. Improves students' mathematical and scientific
literacy.
4. Increases students' understanding of the basis for determining
risk.
3. Increases students' media literacy and their understanding of
public health messages.
2. Empowers students to make more informed personal
health-related decisions.
1. Empowers students to be scientifically literate participants in the democratic decision-making process concerning public health policy.
The goals of the Movement are to improve scientific literacy and increase the number of young people preparing for careers in public health by infusing epidemiology education into curricula in grades 6-12. They address these goals by developing educational materials and extracurricular programs based on epidemiology and public health sciences, providing teacher training, and presenting to groups of students and educators.
If you do not want your children and grandchildren to have to wait until graduate school to learn about the science of epidemiology, you might want consider joining the Movement.
If you will be attending the 2006 Congress of Epidemiology, in Seattle, you can learn more about how you can contribute to improving the status of epidemiology education in grades 6-12, at a brown bag lunch session on Saturday, June 24, from noon to 1:00 p.m.