Purpose
Many women and children in rural communities lack proper health education, often due to complex materials that fail to engage the audience. Our program, HEART (Health Education and Accessibility for Rural Territories), addresses this by developing creative, accessible, and digital health education materials tailored for these communities. At the same time, high school students in this program learn to effectively communicate science and medicine to diverse populations.

Methods
HEART is designed for students interested in increasing health equity in rural areas worldwide. We partnered with the International Young Research Conference based in Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, which is a virtual medicine summer program for more than 300 high school students worldwide. Participants in the HEART program are  tasked with creating rural health educational materials online on topics ranging from handwashing and first aid to RTI treatment and contraception use. The digital educational materials can then be translated to physical pamphlets or booklets for people in rural communities. To aid these initiatives, students will create educational materials such as flyers, videos, apps, games, cartoons, and more. While students have the freedom to be creative, they must consider that most rural areas have limited access to technology and Wi-Fi, and literacy rates, particularly among females, are typically very low globally. The impact of these educational materials is limitless, as each educational material will be tailored to the target population.

Results
After an interest form was sent out, 60 high school students from around the world expressed interest in creating educational materials. These include posters, rap, cartoons, graphic novels, storytelling kits, and manuals. Each week, students can join office hours to learn how to make their material culturally specific. Although the program has not finished yet, several students have already reached out about future plans for this program. The next step is distributing these educational materials through printed posters, apps for communities with phone access.

Conclusion
By providing basic and engaging medical education to villagers and community health volunteers in rural communities, they are more informed of taking care of their health. In addition, high schoolers worldwide have the freedom to improve health literacy through creative methods, while taking into account cultural specific information for the target population.