Integrating Disease Presentations with Community Engagement in a Human Physiology Class

The purpose of this study was to examine how integrating community-related components into student presentations in a human physiology course affects learning by connecting complex biological systems to real-world contexts. Twenty-six students were surveyed to evaluate their Cognitive Engagement, Understanding of Physiological Concepts, Community-Related Engagement, Emotional Engagement, Empowerment, Awareness, and Perception of Community Impact after engaging with peer presentations. The results indicated overall improvements across all measured aspects. This approach demonstrates its effectiveness in deepening students' understanding of physiological mechanisms while also highlighting the broader cultural and societal dimensions of diseases. Los Angeles Mission College, ALRISE 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.