hanks to a £9,000 Heart Research UK and Subway®Healthy Heart Grant, primary school children in East London will be inspired by a human heart specimendisplay and interactive workshops to look after their own hearts, the hearts of others and become biomedical researchers of the future.
Centre of the Cell is an award winning science education centre based in a distinctive orange pod suspended over working laboratories at Queen Mary University of London. This interactive ‘Pod’ enthuses children to become clinical investigators and question how the human body works, why things go wrong and how we can keep healthy for longer. Surrounded by research scientists at work, children as young as ninecan perform their own interactive investigations, use microscopes and observe the workings of human organs in an engaging way.
Previously funded by Heart Research UK in 2012, this successful interactive science project will now be able to extend its reach to schools with limited funds in Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Newham, a predominantly Bangladeshi community with striking health inequalities.
The Healthy Heart Grant will pay for the programming and installation of a preserved human heart, describing its life and then death from coronary heart disease. Fifteen primary schools who cannot afford a visit to the Pod will be offered free places for children aged nine to eleven to connect with the ‘In a Heartbeat’ science shows. The Pod will display films projected onto the ceiling and provide KS2 curriculum-linked interactive games using the latest digital technologies. Bengali translation of information and quiz sheets will be distributed to participating children and will further help to reduce health inequalities in East London.
The Heart Research UK and Subway® Healthy Heart Grant, which provides up to £10,000 to local community projects, is made up of donations made in Subway® stores and the nationwide Subway Helping Hearts™ Family 5K fun runs. The money is then reinvested back into the communities, supporting projects which aim to improve heart health of local residents.
