The Mechanics of an Antiderivative Healthcare System 8-Step PBLP

What if disease could be prevented not through reaction, but through an antiderivative model designed to maintain wellness? This month, we’re applying this concept to healthcare. The Mechanics of an Antiderivative Healthcare System 8-Step PBLP invites students to explore how biological, mathematical, and social systems can work together to “zero out” disease before it multiplies. Using the new STREAMSS framework, learners analyze how prevention functions, like an antiderivative system, curve communities toward wellness.

This Veterans Day, download the Veterans’ Health & Social Support Systems Project-Based Lesson Plan, a STREAMSS resource that brings together Science, Technology, Research, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, and Social Studies to explore how our nation supports those who have served.

Through this project, learners gain a deeper understanding of the systems that shape veteran care, from healthcare access and mental health services to housing programs and the Cost-of-Living Adjustment. By studying how physical wellness, digital innovation, and equitable policy intersect, students are challenged to see veterans’ care not as social services, but as a continuation of the public service contract that defines true citizenship.

Designed for Grades 7-12, this interdisciplinary PBLP encourages empathy, civic awareness, and applied systems thinking.  By the end of the project, learners will have produced meaningful deliverables, from health access campaigns and veteran art showcases to local policy briefs and data-driven COLA reports, connecting classroom learning to real-world advocacy. 

During Thanksgiving, communities often come together in a powerful way, unlocking the resources, partnerships, and coordination needed to provide meals for far more families than at any other time of the year, often at little to no cost to those receiving them. Using Thanksgiving as a real-world case study, learners explore what makes this moment of increased affordability, expanded food access, and high distribution capacity possible, and reflect on why that level of support becomes harder to sustain once the holiday ends.

 From there, learners use STREAMSS disciplines to identify the key factors that support food security, such as open data, shared storage, partner coordination, distribution routes, and volunteer capacity, and explore how small, strategic improvements in these areas can create a derivative effect, where local changes produce larger community impact. Through mapping, modeling, and community-based projects, students design year-round, open-supply-chain food distribution models that aim to keep meals accessible, affordable, and reliably available well beyond Thanksgiving. 

Rising sea levels are transforming coastlines, reshaping ecosystems, and challenging the stability of communities around the world. For many regions, the effects are no longer distant possibilities, they are lived experiences marked by tidal flooding, shoreline erosion, infrastructure strain, and growing disparities in safety and access. Understanding this phenomenon requires more than studying environmental change alone. It calls for a systems-level perspective that connects science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics, and social studies to show how each discipline influences community resilience.

This Project-Based Lesson Plan invites learners to explore rising sea levels not only as an environmental issue, but as a complex, interdisciplinary challenge that impacts every aspect of community life. Through STREAMSS, students examine how climate systems drive sea level rise, how technology helps us monitor change, how engineering redesigns can strengthen infrastructure, how data reveals patterns of vulnerability, how narratives shape public understanding, and how policies determine who is protected, and who is left at risk.

This PBLP empowers learners to see themselves as contributors to long-term solutions, building skills that strengthen local preparedness and support a future where all communities can adapt, thrive, and remain safe in a changing world.