To implement a stroke educational program for inner-city high school students and

measure efficacy by testing for improvement in knowledge.

The majority of stroke intervention programs and stroke education research targets adults. There is a paucity of research focused on stroke education for school-aged children. Previous programs typically involved trained experts teaching to students. This study describes an innovative approach where a select group of students are trained to create educational material to their classmates. This peer-educator model aims to create demographic-appropriate teaching materials to improve stroke knowledge.

Study site was an inner-city high school in Cleveland, Ohio with facilitators from

Metrohealth Medical Center, a tertiary care, safety net hospital and a Comprehensive Stroke Center for the region.

Four groups of sophomores were selected to be ‘Student-Teachers'. Student-Teachers

were taught the stroke curriculum and assigned to teach either about Risk Factors (RF) or Signs & Symptoms (S&S). Each group created their own educational material with an expert facilitator and presented it to their Learner groups.

There were 4 groups of freshman Student-Learners. Each learner group received

instruction on both RF and S& S.

Both Student-Teacher and Student-Learner groups were given a pre-test and post-test. A retention test was administered 1 month after the intervention. Test were scored 0-42.

There was a statistically significant increase between pre- and post- education test scores for each Learner group; the median increase in score was 13. One-month retention scores were similar to post-education scores.