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Deborah Draper, above, leads her science class at Sayre Middle School in West Philadelphia. [Phil Leff/The Daily Pennsylvanian]

"The brain's freaking out!" a group of Sayre Middle School students exclaimed as they tossed "neurotransmitters" -- represented by crumpled up pieces of paper -- through the air.

"That's what happens when you smoke marijuana," they realized excitedly.

This was one scene Alyssa Lord, program coordinator of the Sayre Beacon Health Promotion Disease Prevention program, used to illustrate how the project has infiltrated the classrooms at 58th and Walnut streets.

This program, begun at Sayre last spring, is "a comprehensive, multi-component, school day, after school, evening school and community-based health promotion and disease prevention program," Lord said.

Essentially, the program represents Penn's efforts to find a way "to engage the University's enormous health resources across all the schools and colleges" and use them "to work together to improve the health of West Philadelphia," Director of the Center for Community Partnerships Ira Harkavy said.

Attempts to address disparate health issues of the community have failed in the past. But in the spring of 2002, a group of undergraduates who were part of a Penn internship program run through the CCP determined that in order to sustain an HPDP center, "it had to be connected to the curriculum of the various schools," Harkavy said.

Together, the students researched the feasibility of an HPDP program in Sayre, and College senior Mei Elansary helped write a grant proposal. Students then began forming partnerships with many of Penn's schools, and pushed for History and Sociology of Science Professor Janet Tighe to establish a service learning course that would research and address the needs of the Sayre community. Though Tighe initially refused, it was "hard to resist this group," she said.

Throughout the semester, her students immersed themselves in researching public health and applying that knowledge to Sayre.

This past February, city officials awarded money to several Philadelphia schools -- including Sayre.

This Beacon grant allowed the CCP to hire Lord. Seven teachers at Sayre agreed to partner with the CCP to incorporate three programs into their curriculum.

Those figures have ballooned this fall, tripling the number of teachers and programs that are involved with the HPDP project.

"My hopes are to have Sayre be recognized around the community as a... health center," Principal Joseph Starinieri said.

The cornerstone of the project is "using subversive learning to support core subjects," Lord said.

Sayre students were surveyed regarding their interest in health issues. Topics -- including sexual and reproductive health, asthma, obesity and drugs -- were then incorporated into their core classes.

"These are messages and concepts that they want to hear," and are presented in a way that allows the students to fully absorb the subject content, Lord said.

For example, one part of the project is an after-school fruit stand. "The kids love the idea of running their own business," Elansary said.

And the experiences they acquire filter back into the classroom. The students practice graphing, using data from the fruit stand. They also dissect the fruit, Lord explained.

Moreover, tangible behavioral changes are becoming increasingly evident. You have "13-year-old boys... harassing their friends to eat healthily," Elansary said. And many are embarrassed to confess to having eaten chocolate and potato chips, she continued.

"They're definitely aware of their own health," she added.

But the crux of the Sayre project is the information exchange between Penn and Sayre students -- there's a real "transferrence of knowledge," Lord said.

For example, Penn medical students teach at Sayre, giving them a chance to learn what issues are relevant to kids and how to approach them, Lord said.

While effects of the nine-month-old program have not been quantified, the program's impact on the students is already evident, particularly in some of the Sayre students who participated in a summer program at Penn this year.

With the cooperation of the Health System, students who were failing science spent several weeks this summer in a program with an "interactive curriculum," and meeting with scientists. They ultimately presented projects on aspects of health and science which interested them, said Margaret Cotroneo, a Nursing School professor.

The progress of the students will be tracked during this school year.

While concrete evaluations have not yet been made, Sayre teacher Jennifer Boyd-Waller explained that a teacher of one of the participants exclaimed this year, "What did you do to the boy?"

"He's so much different from what she remembers," Boyd-Waller said. Through working on the summer program, Boyd-Waller said she "saw students... that could not make it in larger groups, work" productively in smaller ones.

Now, they might eat a "tuna sandwich instead of a hoagie [and] be able to tell you why tuna is better," she said.

"What we hope is that the health care in the West Philadelphia community will be improved, and the starting point of that is education," said Bernett Johnson, a Medical School associate dean who works with Sayre.

And HPDP really is that starting point, its organizers say.

"Penn really is the leader in service learning," Elansary said. "We're doing so much, but there's so much potential" to do more.

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