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Community Initiatives

There are many ways Harvard’s faculty, students, and staff contribute to the local community in carrying out the University’s mission of teaching, research, and learning. The diversity of Harvard’s programs, services, and partnerships is the result of years of collaboration between the University and its neighbors.

Programs for Cambridge, Boston, and beyond

Science Brought to Life

MEDscience is an innovative high school science curriculum that provides Boston public school students with the opportunity to bring science to life through hands-on mock clinical cases and classroom lessons conducted at Harvard Medical School (HMS) labs. The program, which launched in 2005 and is currently in 11 Boston schools, is a semester-long high school biology curriculum focused on the anatomy and physiology of seven human organ systems. Each school’s science teacher integrates a MEDscience-designed curriculum into his or her classroom instruction. Once a week, the class travels to the MEDscience Simulation Lab at HMS to apply classroom learning to patient care.

Read more, and watch a video, about the MEDscience program in the Harvard Gazette.

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