Let’s Get Healthy! wins the 2015 SOPHE Technology Award

Let’s Get Healthy!, the popular interactive education and research exhibit, has just won the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) Technology Award. Let’s Get Healthy! debuted in 2007 to increase public awareness of biomedical research and demonstrate how public participation in research can advance biomedical science. Currently, more than 16,700 people have participated at 107 sites (including four states outside of Oregon) with an additional 700 participating in two longitudinal cohort studies. The project is funded by a NIH Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA), and from launch to success, has continued to receive extensive OCTRI informatics and study coordinator support.

One of the key factors in Let’s Get Healthy!’s success stems from its ability to conduct rapid surveillance of schools and communities, who then use the resulting data to develop programs and write grants that support healthy living in their community. Schools also use the data to conduct scientific inquiry lessons with their students, who can filter the interactive summary data based on desired criteria or examine relationships among health variables like body fat percentage and sugar intake using their school’s using real, but completely anonymous, data. Visit the Let’s Get Healthy! website to explore all of the summary data for yourself!

The SOPHE Technology Award recognizes individuals or groups who have distinguished themselves by applying innovative, non-commercial technology in health education that can be broadly disseminated and has the potential to make a significant impact in health education practice.