UW News

November 20, 2003

Virtual secret agent encourages healthy behavior

It takes a lot of heart to fight evil — just ask Secret Agent Guy Simplant, who in his latest adventure is teetering on the losing edge of a battle with the ultra-naughty Evil Spy, and with his own poor health-care choices.

But fear not! Simplant, with $1.55 million in backing from the National Institutes of Health, is taking his cause to Puget Sound schoolchildren and asking their help to defeat the forces of darkness and whip the hero back into shape. In the process, the students stand to help themselves as well.

That’s the hope of a group of bioengineering researchers and educators at the UW Engineered Biomaterials (UWEB) Engineering Research Center and the Hope Heart Institute, who are collaborating with area teachers to launch a health and science education program with Simplant as the focal point. The Washington Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement program (MESA) is also involved.

The initiative, called “Youth Take Heart,” has been awarded the NIH grant to carry out a five-year educational plan on cardiovascular health, aimed at students in grades 6–12. The effort has a two-prong emphasis, according to project director Fanaye Turner, director of education and outreach at UWEB.

“We want to introduce students, especially minority students, to careers in health and science,” she said. “And we want to educate them about good health practices. There are a number of studies that indicate that many of the health problems related to cardiovascular disease start in childhood, even though the diseases don’t appear until later.”

Phil Nudelman, chief executive officer of the Hope Heart Institute, agreed.

“If we don’t act on prevention at the K-12 age, we will become more and more a country of overweight, obese, risk-laden people with diabetes and heart disease,” he said. “Education early on can prevent that.”

Learning about the heart naturally brings science fundamentals into the picture, Turner added. “To know what is going on in the heart, you have to have science and you have to have math,” she said.

But to get the kids to listen, you also have to have visual appeal and an element of entertainment.  Guy Simplant, created and developed by a team led by Associate Professor Karen Cheng, chair of the Visual Communication Design Program in the UW’s School of Art, has both.  For convenience, Simplant is packaged on a CD-ROM and available in an interactive Web-based format.

Here’s the scenario: Guy is hot in pursuit of Evil Spy, who has stolen top-secret plans for a super-secret hand implant (which Guy sports — he obtained it in an earlier episode) and Guy has to break off the chase because he’s too out of breath. He visits Dr. Z, who treats all the top secret agents, and she tells him that she suspects heart trouble.

In the process of helping Guy, students learn how the heart works, what can go wrong and why, and how heart disease is treated. They are asked to set up a program for Guy to manage his diet, exercise and stress, and they have an opportunity to see the results.

If Guy and his student helpers aren’t careful about his choices, he could end up having a massive heart attack during his next encounter with Evil Spy. At that point, students learn about tissue engineering and a cutting-edge project by the UW and Hope Heart to grow living, beating patches of tissue to bind up severely damaged hearts and help them pump efficiently again.

The NIH funding is timely in rounding out the program, which will also include a laboratory kit and general curriculum, and will eventually be offered to students across the state and country, Turner said. But she sees it as just the beginning.

“We’re planning many more adventures,” said Turner. “We could do one for every major body part. Who knows — we might be as enduring as the James Bond series has been.”

Simplant fans think it’s possible. After all, their hero is cool, suave and has a geek-chic that 007 can only dream of. No martinis for this agent, though — he needs to take care of that heart thing. Just carrot juice, please. Shaken, not stirred.

Agent Guy Simplant: Case of the Ailing Heart can be seen on the Web at http://www.guysimplant.org.