COLUMBUS, Ohio — The American Heart Association hosted its first STEM Goes Red event in central Ohio.
The organization is stepping up its efforts to draw young girls into health-related STEM fields, while teaching them about heart disease, the number one killer of Americans and one in three women.
- Girls dissected animal hearts, created fingers that could pick up items, and learned how to insert pacemakers at Otterbein University
- Experts from the health industry served as mentors for girls as they learned about STEM careers and heart health
- Over 2,000 young girls have taken part in STEM Goes Red since 2016
100 girls from Columbus City Schools got a chance to learn about STEM careers, while getting hands-on experience.
Halfway through the day, 15-year-old Selena Bradley and her peers from Linden McKinley dived right into dissecting sheep and pig hearts.
As they learned how the blood pumped and flowed through each, cardiologists and veterinarians explained how each part connected together.
It's the first time they got to do something like this.
For some, the experience was a little weird, because they actually got to touch an animal's heart.
Spreading the heart open wide, Bradley says, was pretty cool, because she doesn't usually get to learn this way.
"You don't really get to learn about things outside of your body," said Bradley.
Bradley wants to be a pediatrician one day, but she's still not sure how learning about it all will connect to her future career.
Although students were working with animal hearts, they began to see similarities between the heart in their hand and the human heart.
It helped experts explain to them what happens when humans have heart attacks.
Mentors in the room were hoping that the different STEM sessions would create a spark and challenge Bradley and other girls to pursue health-related STEM careers.
Right now, females make up just 34% of practicing physicians, while 38% are medical researchers.
Scrubbing down like a regular doctor would to wrap up a procedure, Bradley took what she learned with the hope that what she got will prove to be useful in the years to come.
So far, over 2,000 young girls have taken part in STEM Goes Red events across the country since 2016.
The organization is hoping they'll be able to bring it back to central Ohio next year.