Cincinnati Children’s Lends Expertise to New Museum Exhibit
Post Date: August 5, 2024 | Publish Date:
Three experts from Cincinnati Children’s helped lend their expertise to the Cincinnati Museum Center’s latest exhibit, “Advancing Health.”
The permanent addition to the Museum of Natural History & Science opened July 12, 2024. It is designed to teach patrons about the various aspects of the human body in a fun, interactive environment.
According to the Museum Center, “‘Advancing Health’ turns the body inside out, revealing how it works, the steps to keep it healthy and the breakthroughs that help us back to good health. As you explore body systems – cell-by-cell and as one complex system – you’ll learn how to better listen to your body, how to better care for yourself and maybe even how to care for others.”
The new exhibit is organized into nine sections—heart; blood; lungs; muscles; bones; brain, nerves and spine; mental health; immune system; and digestion—and involved support from other local health partners, such as Mayfield Brain & Spine, Hoxworth Blood Center, UC’s Osher Center for Integrative Health, Johnson & Johnson MedTech, and more.
Conrad Cole, MD, medical director of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, as well as the Intestinal Rehabilitation Program at Cincinnati Children’s, worked on the Digestion section, which features a light-up diagram of the gastrointestinal tract and follows the path of food from “teeth to toilet.”
“Your digestive system breaks down food and delivers nutrients to your cells that sustain life. Without proper nutrition and digestion, you can’t heal or grow,” Cole says on the section’s plaque.
Lori Crosby, PsyD, co-director of Innovations in Community Research for the Division of Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology and director of the CCTST Community Engagement Core, shares wisdom for the Mental Health section. Importantly, the section discusses the importance of caring for yourself mentally and how that impacts the body.
“What you think and feel impacts your health and behavior – they literally change your body and brain,” Crosby’s plaque reads. “When you’re mentally healthy, your thoughts and feelings help you cope. When you’re not, they impact your health in a negative way.”
Molly Thomas, PT, a physical therapist at Cincinnati Children’s, helped develop the Muscles section, which takes an inclusive look at how muscles function typically and explains how disorders like cerebral palsy can affect them. The section also includes a look at how biceps and triceps engage to move arms in different directions.
Thomas’ plaque reads, “The human body has more than 600 muscles and they do a lot of work! They help you stand, run, jump, roll over, sit in a chair or drive a car. They help you function – and function looks different for every person.”
Brian Coley, MD, Cincinnati Children’s radiologist-in-chief and a member of the Cincinnati Museum Center’s Board of Trustees, played an active role in the planning and content development of this exhibit.
“The new Advancing Health exhibit is engaging and interactive for museum visitors of all ages and hopes to serve multiple goals, first and foremost being to educate people about their bodies and the interconnectedness of its systems and steps that each person can do to improve their health and wellbeing,” Coley says. “Each part features a patient and a healthcare provider, highlighting the significance of that relationship.
“Importantly, the providers featured span the range of healthcare roles and the diversity of our workforce. We hope that visitors, especially younger ones, will be able to see themselves represented and thus consider a career in healthcare as something desirable and attainable. Local companies are also featured, highlighting the role that our region and workforce is playing in the creation and development of healthcare technology.”
