How do our kidneys influence our cardiovascular health?

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Diana Jalal, a nephrologist at the University of Iowa. She is investigating the links between chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease.

• This resource also contains an interview with Diana and offers an insight into careers in nephrology. If your students have questions for Diana, they can send them to her online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Diana will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Diana’s research and challenges them to pretend to be a journalist and write an engaging but non-sensational news report about a scientific discovery.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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