Associate Professor Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, Massachusetts, United States
Introduction:: Engineering students spend much of their time focused on technical aspects of their education to develop new technologies to address challenges. Biomedical engineers are uniquely situated at the interface between engineering, biology, and human health, though often coursework does not focus on the societal aspects that impact if patients will have access to new technologies. Access to high quality healthcare and state of the art technologies is not equal, several factors impact if a patient will have the same access as others. These factors can be defined as SDOH or “the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the condition of daily life” (World Health Organization). Through learning about SDOH within the context of engineering design, students may improve their ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global and societal contexts (ABET outcome 4). This presentation will report on the evolution of this learning module based on student feedback, surveys, assignments, and instructor perspective of the learning experience from assignments and surveys.
Materials and Methods:: To increase student awareness of challenges surrounding access to medical technologies, a multi-day module focused on the interface between technology and social determinants focused on diabetes was developed for a drug delivery course. In this multi-day active learning module, students learn about the technologies used to treat diabetes (focusing on type I diabetes) as well as SDOH that impact diabetes care and ultimate quality and longevity of life. Students are assigned multiple readings to prepare themselves for the technical and societal aspects of the learning activity. A brief presentation is provided to ensure students have the foundation understanding of insulin, the pancreas, diabetes, glucose monitoring, and treatment. The students break up into small groups and research a technological aspect of diabetes treatment, develop a mini presentation, and report back to the entire class what they learned. After completing the mini-presentations, the in-class learning experience transitions focus to SDOH and diabetes. The students discuss in small groups the SDOH that impacts diabetic patient outcomes based on the readings, prior knowledge, and experience within this space. The module wraps up with a class-wide discussion on SDOH with students identifying ways in which we, as engineers, can address these inequalities. A reflection assignment and a survey were used to assess the SDOH module. The survey was administered using Microsoft Forms, which meets HIPAA and FERPA compliance, and did not collect identifiable information. Students completed the post-class survey on a voluntary basis.
Results, Conclusions, and Discussions:: The interactive and engaging nature of this module allowed students to learn through assigned course materials, in class discussions, and reflecting on their experience. In the first two offerings, the module spanned two class meetings. This was deemed insufficient to facilitate deep discussion, mini-presentations, and bring the class together at the end to discuss. Many of the findings reported here are from the third offering which spanned three class meetings and included a survey to assess individual components of the module. From the reflection responses it is clear that students like the group discuss and integration of drug delivery technologies with societal impacts. Students were able to make connections to their prior experiences (coursework and life) to better understand how SDOH impacts health outcomes in addition to the technical content on diabetes treatment and blood glucose monitoring. Preliminarily, the survey results provided quantitative assessment, showing that the students thought the (1) assigned reading materials were useful for learning about SDOH, (2) class discussion was useful for learning about SDOH, and (3) class discussion was valuable to them in building their understanding about SDOH (all preliminary result scores can be found in Table 1). Integrating SDOH determinants of health and engineering design into engineering coursework may help students understand the interplay between society and engineering, while addressing ABET student outcomes, specifically, ABET learning outcome 4 “an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts”.
