Health Education for the 21st Century

Update

The Ruth Lilly Health Education Center has been given the opportunity to reinvent health education in the state of Indiana. A $3 million grant from Lilly Endowment is providing resources for a unique collaboration among the RLHEC, IU School of Informatics and IU School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences at IUPUI to improve the effectiveness of health education through the integration of digital technology and informatics. The project is known as Health Education for the 21st Century.

The project is spearheaded by a panel of experts in health education, technology and educational assessment. Through this joint effort, the project committee is creating an innovative health education “learning laboratory.” Improvements expected by the conclusion of the project include the digitization of all Center programs, new interactive computer activities for students, the creation of new multimedia applications, and a plan for evaluating the effectiveness of the Center's programming in central Indiana, which may involve programming assessment enhancements for health education centers nationwide.

Now in the third year of the three-year grant from Lilly Endowment, Health Education for the 21st Century is focused on the following areas:

Software Development

• Software development is under way for the Web-based interface that will allow access to all Center programming from a centralized server. Classes will no longer be exclusively theater dependent and will have the potential to be accessible from satellite locations around the world. The RLHEC's Internet2 connection will greatly enhance the speed of delivery of our educational programming to outside sites.
• 3-D (three-dimensional) animations of various body systems are being incorporated into existing programming. These remarkable animations can be viewed in 2-D or, in some cases, 3-D using special 3-D glasses. Two RLHEC theaters are being equipped with this capability.
• Interactive multimedia games are receiving upgrades.

Nutrition Theater Renovation Completed

Renovation of the Nutrition Theater was completed in December 2004. The theater now features fresh carpeting and updated colors, a new seven-speaker surround sound system, a new rear projection screen, and a new computer and touch screen monitor. Additional benefits of the renovation include:

• The deployment of a custom-created Nutrition Calculator that allows access to the USDA database for graphically comparing nutritional content of various foods. Improved graphics and animations are also under development.
• The implementation of RFID (radio frequency identification) tag technology as a physical object interface gives students the ability to interact with this unique media. Here's how we use this emerging - and amazing - technology:

1.  RFID tags placed on the bottom of food models on a cafeteria tray send signals to the Nutrition Theater computer.
2. The computer generates a graphic of the food models on a large rear projection screen.
3. Nutritional content information is displayed in a graph to facilitate and underscore the educational message.