Phoenix Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitor Project
Sub-project: Sphygmochron.org Homeschool Science Project
Project Description
The purpose of the Homeschool Science Project idea is to define a
science project suitable for homeschooled kids that would
simultaneously teach them the importance of continuous monitoring of
blood pressure and provide a early group of users for the
Sphygmochron.org website.
The current state of this subproject is that I'm just beginning to
envision it explicitly enough to write it down. I could use ideas
from anyone who reads this page.
Project Deliverables
Background
Dr. Halberg has told me numerous times that monitoring and
teaching young people is of high importance to him. The value of this was recently
and tangibly driven home to me when I discovered that I already know a
family whose two teenage kids are being treated for inherited high
blood pressure. High blood pressure can show up
much earlier in people's lives than I would have suspected.
Many homeschooling parents are open to new ideas; they are
self-motivated to find what they perceive to be improvements over the
status quo in various areas, and might be convinced to let their
children try this project idea. Homeschooling parents are somewhat
self-organizing; they form informal support groups to help each other
with resources and pass information amongst each other.
How the project would work
On the Sphygmochron.org website, we could publish a science project built around
- the concept of building the $200 Home-ABPM kit,
- learning about blood pressure concepts from basic
single-measurement monitoring to continuous monitoring, and perhaps
some basic physiology,
- then monitoring one or more family members,
- submitting the data to the Sphygmochron.org website,
- and producing a final report.
I see the project as crossing several disciplines that homeschooling
parents are concerned about, and that combination of practicing skills
should be explained as an advantage to the parents:
Biology/physiology
The physiology materials should contain drawings of the heart to
explain how pressure is formed and the concepts of systolic vs.
diastolic pressure. For advanced students, include mean arterial
pressure and pulse pressure. There should also be a drawing of
the human body that shows peripheral organs that are damaged by high
diastolic blood pressure.
Art
The physiology drawings should be labeled and colored by the student.
Math
This may be too challenging even for high school students, much less
younger students, but I would expect that some study of time series and
cosinor concepts would be possible. Somewhat easier is doing some
graphing on paper, calculating MAP and PP from SBP and DBP, calculating
or measuring area under a curve, calculating amount of expected
pressures over time
Electronics
Some of this should be obvious from the "kit" instructions.
However, in addition to just blindly building the kit, there's
some opportunities to learn about measurements with a voltmeter,
battery power, safety, and switches.
Invention
TBD. What can we teach kids about the process of inventing
something while they are opening up a blood pressure monitor and a
timer and wiring them together to make a new device? Opportunity
for discussing the value of the patent system in allowing people to
build upon others' work to foster innovation, too...
Writing
The writing of the final report could be evaluated based on
"scientificness" if desired, but would not be necessary. Any
other formal literature organization could be valid, at the parents'
discretion, to match the student's interests; for example, perhaps a
project diary format, or construction of "marketing materials" to
"sell" the idea of continuous blood pressure monitoring to others would
make an interesting project.
Success depends on both the parents understanding and liking the
science project idea (because they won't try it otherwise), and just as
importantly, the kids understanding and liking the science project
after they've completed it (because the parents won't pass the idea on
to other parents unless the kids enjoyed and learned something from it).
Marketing the project
Somehow, we'd have to get the word out to homeschooling parents that
the project description is available. The informal network of
homeschooling parents should provide much of the communication
necessary (via word-of-mouth) after some initial success occurs.
To "feed" that communication network, one would start at
homeschooling conventions.
About once a year in each area (generally during the spring and summer
in the upper midwest), there is a homeschooling convention.
Parents attend these conventions to
- buy curriculums, books, educational materials, etc. from exhibitors, and
- attend workshops and listen to lectures on homeschooling topics.
Most exhibitors booths are taken up by commercial companies.
However, the booths seem inexpensive (on the order of $100), and
the MN Historical Society had a booth at a recent convention I
attended. A single blood pressure science project is probably
not, all by itself, enough of an item to have it's own booth, based on
what I saw at this one convention. However, if it were sponsored
by a commercial company in their booth, or part of a booth in
collaboration with some other U of MN project, it would be an
appropriate setting.
A science project intended to educate your child and improve the health
of the entire family would probably fill one of the smaller workshop
rooms; the challenge here would be to convince the convention
organizers to sponsor such a workshop.
Advantages
This project would seem to meet the objective of teaching people at a
young age something about the metabolic syndrome, specifically how to
monitor and verify efficacy of treatment of blood pressure and heart
rate variability disorders. It provides a tangible audience to
"market" to, which provides its own word-of-mouth advertising.
Problems to be Resolved
Blood pressure cuffs for kids seem to be hard to come by. Such
things have to be available, but a quick search of the A&D website
and the web in general didn't turn up much.
The Sphygmochron currently doesn't have any reference values for kids
(under age 20). How can we issue a Sphygmochron on the main
subject, the student himself?
While the idea is to provide the science project description for free, the home ABPM kit isn't cheap.
The science project might not be seen as important because it is not
part of one of the common science curriculums available to
homeschoolers from the commercial market.
The science project is best understood by older kids, but the number of homeschooled kids drops off with age.
The IRB and FDA have additional confidentiality restrictions for
children (age 17 and under). Further, "targeting" homeschooled
kids will possibly undergo additional scrutiny as a potentially
discriminatory method.
About This Page
This page is maintained by Larry A. Beaty.
It was last updated on 29 April 2007.
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(C) 2007 Larry A. Beaty.
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