A Single Lecture Intervention Improves Students Ability to Apply Public Health Approaches to Cardiovascular Disease in Marginalized Communities

Introduction: Physiology education often focuses on discussing cellular and system-based mechanisms of health and disease in the general population, but discussion of how disease burdens marginalized communities is often relegated to social science classrooms. Objective: To determine the effect of a lecture intervention on the self-efficacy of undergraduate human physiology students in building public health-based interventions to improve cardiovascular health in marginalized communities. Methods: A Qualtrics survey containing Likert-like items as well as open-ended questions assessing understanding of cardiovascular health issues in marginalized communities and interest in learning more about the topic in their courses was sent out to students enrolled (n = 105) in an upper-division pathophysiology course at Boston University. Students were surveyed before and after a targeted physiology and public health-based lecture intervention which aimed to teach students about behavior change strategies and interventions. Results: Of the 105 enrolled students, 28 students responded to the pre-intervention survey as of Dec 1, 2024. Pre-survey: Of pre-intervention respondents, 71% identified as White and 29% identified as Asian; 64% were cisgender women and 36% were cisgender men; 46% identified within the LGBTQIA+ community and 54% were heterosexual. In response to a Likert-like question (scale 1-5, 1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) asking if students agreed that they could come up with potential solutions to lower cardiovascular health risk in LGBTQIA2S+ communities, the median response was 2.5; in response to the same question regarding marginalized racial and ethnic communities, the median response was 3. In response to an open-ended question on the pre-intervention survey regarding ways to intervene to reduce health inequities in marginalized communities, 21% of students reported, “I don’t know.” Post-survey : Of the 28 students who completed the pre-survey, 10 completed the post-intervention survey. These students’ demographic breakdowns were similar to those who completed the pre-survey. In response to a Likert-like question asking if students agreed that they could come up with potential solutions to lower cardiovascular health risk in LGBTQIA2S+ communities, the median response was 4; in response to the same question regarding marginalized racial and ethnic communities, the median response was 5, demonstrating improvement in average student self-efficacy post-lecture intervention. Moreover, in response to an open-ended question regarding ways to reduce health inequities in marginalized communities, 60% of respondents listed explicit public health activities such as subsidizing exercise programs, performing physician/provider education, and facilitating DEI trainings. Importantly, no students replied, “I don’t know”. Conclusion: In addition to teaching population-specific physiology, lecture spaces are helpful for building efficacy in undergraduate students’ ability to design health interventions using multidisciplinary tools and frameworks. Simple, single-lecture interventions may foster more creative future scientists and clinicians prepared to reduce health inequities among marginalized communities. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.