Creighton University Medical Students Present on Health and Well-Being at Red Cloud

posted March 13, 2014

“The big intestines? No, the small intestines!” yelled Gabe, a sixth-grade student at Red Cloud Indian School. “Am I right?!” he asked excitedly as his classmates looked curiously at the medical mannequin before them.

“Yes! These are the small intestines, which are filled with thousands of tiny intestinal villi that help you absorb important nutrients,” answered Cassie Phillips, one of the medical students from Creighton University Medical School in Omaha, Nebraska who visited Red Cloud’s Pine Ridge and Our Lady of Lourdes campuses this week.

The eight Creighton medical students are part of a group called Project C.U.R.A. (Creighton Medical United in Relief Assistance)  that travels to underserved locations during their spring and summer breaks to provide health and wellness education. During their visit the group separated into specialty groups and spoke with Red Cloud students from kindergarten through high school about how nutrition, exercise and mental health are all key components of a healthy life.

“We believe that if young students start learning about health and well-being early, they will be able to adopt a healthy lifestyle that will allow them to reach their full potential,” said Sydney Marsh, one of the Creighton students.

“It’s really encouraging for them,” shared Katie Montez, a high school science teacher at Red Cloud. “Having the Creighton medical students here allows our students to imagine what education can be like outside of high school—it makes higher education real for them.”

Healthy Eating

The healthy eating group addressed the concepts of a balanced diet and portion control. Pulling from the ‘My Plate’ system, which replaced the USDA’s food pyramid, the Creighton group worked with Red Cloud students to imagine what a healthy meal with lots of whole grains, lean protein, and a very colorful palette of fruits and vegetables looks like.

By examining the nutrients themselves, as well as the process of digestion, the medical students discussed why “sometimes” foods like chips, cookies, and ice cream are not the healthiest choices for supporting an active mind and a healthy body.

Exercise

Another group discussed the role of exercise as preventative ‘medicine’ that can help combat the reservation’s extraordinarily high rate of diabetes and heart disease—a condition that affects many children.

After the medical students discussed the great effort the heart undertakes to supply our body with blood and nutrients, Red Cloud students got the chance to use stethoscopes and listened to their own heartbeats before and after light exercise, noting the difference even simple activity can have on heart rate and overall health.

Mental Health

Keeping in mind the reservation’s high rates of mental illness and youth suicide, a third group focused on showing Red Cloud students that, like any other body part, the brain is an organ too.

Students learned that the brain can be affected not only by environmental influences like education, home-life, and our positive and negative experiences, but also by diet choices and substance abuse as easily as the heart or stomach. What a person eats, students learned, can have major effects on their emotions, stress and ability to pay attention in school.

Ashlee Commeree, another Creighton medical student, noted that Red Cloud students were completely enthusiastic throughout the presentations. “You could really see the wheels turning for them,” Ashlee remembered. “Especially for the seniors. They were totally into it and willing to learn.”

“A lot of the kids really surprised me,” said medical student Jon Campbell. “We came here having heard about the statistics of Pine Ridge—unemployment, health issues and more—and you’d figure the school systems would be lacking, but that really wasn’t the case here at Red Cloud. The students often knew what we were talking about.”

 

View More Pictures Here

 

“We were actually asking some seniors if they could give us simple examples of basic muscle types, such as smooth or skeletal,” said medical student Joel Fuchs. “They totally blew me away when they started yelling out ‘simple squamous epithelium!’—I didn’t know that sort of terminology until I was at Creighton in this medical program. I think that moment really put to rest some of the expectations that we had when we arrived.”

Watching her students return to her science classroom after the presentation, Katie says it was clear that the medical presentation had left a lasting impression. She is extremely grateful for Creighton’s strong partnership and the support the medical students provided.

“There is something about having a diverse set of graduate students who grew up in various places around the country come to speak with students here. I think it shows our students that it doesn’t matter where you come from—if you have a dream and pursue it, it can become a reality.”

Learn more about how Red Cloud Indian School is supporting

the next generation of Native scientists. 

 

All Content, ©Red Cloud Indian School, 2014