Teaching Children to Be Health Educators

: A nursing school, an elementary school, and several local organizations initiated a pilot project to address hypertension in rural Hawaii. Their goal was to help increase awareness of hypertension in the community by partnering with sixth-grade students as health educators. As part of their pediatric clinical rotation, nursing students developed a curriculum and taught the elementary school students to take and record blood pressures. The sixth graders learned to use blood pressure monitors and took and recorded over 1,500 of their friends' and family members' blood pressures. The students were also able to correctly identify elevated findings. This pilot project is an example of how children can be taught to participate in a community collaboration to promote health care in their community.