By Liz Torrey

How many elementary school students can say they saved their teacher’s life?

We know of at least one.

“Basically, that’s the whole story,” said Phyllis Byrd, Ph.D., fourth grade teacher at Patrick Copeland Elementary School in Hopewell, Virginia. “My student saved my life.”

This past school year, Byrd’s class participated in the VCU Health Pauley Heart Center’s Teach BP program, a curriculum in which fourth and fifth-grade students learn about blood pressure from Pauley’s heart doctors and researchers: why blood pressure is important, how to take a blood pressure reading, and what those readings mean. They also learn high blood pressure is a “silent killer” that can affect important organs in your body — causing heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, and even blindness. Most importantly, students are taught how high blood pressure can be prevented in the first place.

Armed with all this knowledge, students are then encouraged to share what they learned with loved ones. They take a “loaner” blood pressure device home and use them to take readings with family.

During one in-class Teach BP session last fall, a Patrick Copeland fourth grader insisted that he needed to take his teacher’s blood pressure.

“I said, ‘No, let me be,’” Byrd recalled, “but he was persistent, so then I thought to myself, ‘Okay, let me play along,’ And the truth of the matter is that what my blood pressure should have been, I would not have been able to tell you at that particular time—because I was not keeping up with the program.”

---

Phyllis Byrd, Ph.D., teaches fourth grade at Patrick Copeland Elementary School in Hopewell. (Daniel Sangjib Min, MCV Foundation)

---

 A lifelong educator and school administrator, Byrd had been using Teach BP classroom sessions as planning time to prep for the next day’s lessons. The little boy fastened the cuff around her arm, pressed a few buttons on the device, explained how it worked to his teacher, and then read out her blood pressure numbers.

“One of the adults in the room heard that number, and knew that it was not quite right,” Byrd said. “So that person took my blood pressure again, and surely, it was too high. And even after everyone [from Teach BP] left that day, I went to the school nurse and had her do it for me again. She said, ‘Yes, Dr. Byrd, you should definitely get this checked out!’”

Byrd had been experiencing debilitating headaches and chest pain for a few months, and conveniently enough, had an appointment scheduled for the very next day with her family medicine doctor to discuss these symptoms. Upon arrival, she mentioned her Teach BP experience the previous afternoon. After a fourth check of Byrd’s blood pressure, a nurse practitioner swiftly prescribed her a low dose of losartan, a common and inexpensive blood pressure medication.

“Surely enough, I would say about four or five days down the road, I could see the difference,” Byrd said. “I diligently take my pill every morning.”

It’s safe to assume that Byrd’s family medicine practitioner would have caught her high blood pressure at the appointment, with or without the intervention of her student. That said, Byrd gives the boy all the credit.

“I’m really not sure if I would be sitting here today without him,” she said. “Even with the headaches and the discomfort of the chest pains, it never occurred to me that it could be my blood pressure. I was sitting here thinking, ‘Oh, I’m perfectly healthy,’ even while knowing that blood pressure is a ‘silent killer,’ and that it disproportionately affects different ethnic groups.”

Byrd is a Black woman, and according to the American Heart Association, from 2013 to 2018, nearly 42% of Black Americans had hypertension, as compared to 34% of white Americans, 28% of Asian Americans, and 23% of Hispanic Americans.

The goal of the Teach BP program is to spark intergenerational change in communities with high rates of hypertension. Research has shown how children can positively influence and inform their parents’ health and health care decisions – and the Teach BP program aims to prove the same.

---

The Teach BP program, organized by VCU Health Pauley Heart Center, teaches students how having high blood pressure can harm important organs throughout the body. (Daniel Sangjib Min, MCV Foundation)

---

 “What is astounding is that we can teach elementary school children about not only the dangers of high blood pressure, but how to measure blood pressure,” said Teach BP program manager Cheryl Rocha. “They really get it! These children come out of the program with the ability to change their communities by measuring blood pressure and teaching blood pressure.”

The program not only reaches elementary school students, but older students as well. Hopewell High is also located on the same campus as Patrick Copeland Elementary. Students in the high school’s health occupations program regularly volunteer with Teach BP across the campus.

Bringing health resources to communities disproportionately affected by hypertension

Pauley Health Center is working to bring Teach BP to Richmond-area communities with high rates of hypertension. Hopewell, for example, is ranked 11th out of 133 counties and independent cities in Virginia in prevalence of hypertension, while neighboring Petersburg is ranked first. Nearly 40% of adults in Hopewell have high blood pressure, but only 25% of adults in Hopewell are on medication for high blood pressure.

Hypertension is one of the leading causes of heart disease. Hopewell has the eighth highest annual rate of death from heart disease in the commonwealth.

“We have a high percentage of poverty as well as nutritional and health gaps in our community,” said Hopewell City Schools Superintendent Melody Hackney, EdD, in an interview with VCU School of Medicine. “When you are trying to change entrenched behaviors, you do it from the kids up and not the adults down. [Teach BP] feels like we can make a difference in an almost monumental and insurmountable challenge.” 

---

As part of the program, providers and researchers from VCU Health Pauley Heart Center go into schools to teach students how to take blood pressure readings. (Daniel Sangjib Min, MCV Foundation)

---

Data coming out of Teach BP demonstrates that children are having a positive impact on the heart health of the adults in their household. Comparing surveys of 95 students before and after participating in the program during the 2021-2022 school year, students significantly improvement their knowledge about healthy nutrition by about 40%, organs affected by hypertension by 55%, and understanding of blood pressure by nearly 37%.

When parents or family members of children in the program discover that they have high blood pressure, they are referred to local health clinics where they can obtain low-cost or free medications that treat hypertension.

“What’s unique about this program, and why we’re so grateful to the Pauley Heart Center, is that our kids become the teachers,” Hackney said. “They’re taking that home to their grandparents, their dads, their moms, and playing an active role in improving their health.”

---

In 2022, Teach BP first launched an elementary school in Richmond. The program expanded to Hopewell the next year. (Daniel Sangjib Min, MCV Foundation)

---

 Teach BP first launched in 2022 at the Anna Julia Cooper School in Richmond, and in 2023 expanded to Hopewell. The program was originally conceived of by Sangeeta Shah, M.D., director of the Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program at the Pauley Heart Center, for a local troop of Girl Scouts when she was practicing medicine in New Orleans.

Long-term, program organizers hope and believe that Teach BP will have a positive impact on the students themselves.

“This program does three wonderful things,” Shah explained. “We empower children to ask questions about their health; expose them to VCU students who are pursuing careers in science, medicine, and research; and start a positive ripple effect on the personal health of their families, communities, and hopefully, themselves, in the short- and long-term.”

“Brene Brown has a great analogy about trust being like a marble jar,” Rocha added. “She says that trust is like a jar that gets filled up, marble by marble. I believe that through the Teach BP program, we can gradually build trust within the community, little by little. Small acts over time can lead to significant changes. That is true of both trust and our personal health.”

“I know that the children enjoyed Teach BP, and I think they captured a lot from the program,” Byrd said. “I know I certainly did.”

Learn about our expert cardiac care team at VCU Health Pauley Heart Center

Read more heart health stories on the Pauley Heart Center blog