Can scientists prevent kidney disease?

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 Jamie Privratsky, a physician scientist at Duke University Medical Center in the US. He divides his time between treating critically ill patients on the hospital wards and uncovering the biological causes of their conditions, in particular acute kidney injury.

• This resource also contains an interview with Jamie and offers an insight into careers as a physician scientist. If your students have questions for Jamie, they can send them to him 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). Jamie will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Jamie’s research and challenges them to design and cook a kidney-friendly diet.

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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