Slide deck
Sixteen slides, adaptable to middle school or high school audiences. Twelve are core; four are optional. Each slide carries the same talking points as this document in its speaker notes.
School Outreach Toolkit
Lead a short session on PKD at your own school.
This toolkit is designed primarily for an adolescent with ADPKD, or with known familial risk for ADPKD, who wants to lead a short awareness session at their own school. Because the materials are open access, another student or an educator may also adapt them with the school’s approval. The session is educational: it does not require a doctor, a lawyer, or any other professional in the room, and it is subject to the school’s ordinary approval and supervision, the same as any student presentation.
Version 5, September 2026
Speaker talking points
What to say on each slide, how to adjust it by age group, what to do with common questions, and where the lines are.
Frequently asked questions
Plain-language answers to the questions classmates and staff ask most, including the misconceptions.
Teacher or administrator one-pager
A single page for the adult who approves or supervises the session, explaining what it is, what it is not, and where accommodation decisions actually live.
Before you present
- Get the school’s approval the way you would for any student presentation. Give the teacher or administrator the one-pager. Ask what time you have and who will be in the room.
- Decide, with a parent or guardian (or another trusted adult), what you will and will not say about yourself. Slide 2 gives you four openers, and none of them requires you to say you have ADPKD. Slide 14 (“My story”) is optional and can be deleted. Decide this before the session, not on your feet.
- Choose your slides using the table below. Delete the ones you are not using. Nothing else in the deck depends on them.
- Read the FAQ once. Most questions you will get are in it.
- Rehearse out loud once, with a timer. The core deck runs about ten to twelve minutes at a normal pace. Optional slides add two to four minutes each.
- Bring a printed copy of this document or open the speaker notes on the slides. Nobody expects you to have it memorized.
Downloads
- Slide deck (PowerPoint)
- Speaker talking points (Word) · PDF
- Frequently asked questions (Word) · PDF
- Teacher or administrator one-pager (Word) · PDF
General questions about the toolkit can be sent to contact@pkdbridge.org. Questions about a specific student should go to that student’s family and the school’s own staff.
Where the lines are
This session teaches what ADPKD is and how it can show up at school. It is not medical advice, legal advice, school-advocacy representation, counseling, or crisis support. In practice that means you do not:
- Give numbers or targets for water, salt, blood pressure, or anything else. “That’s a question for their clinician” is the answer.
- Name specific medicines or say what anyone should or should not take.
- Talk about any particular person’s health, including other students, family members, or yourself beyond what you decided in advance to share.
- Tell anyone whether they should be tested, how testing works, or what their risk is.
- Tell teachers or staff what accommodations a student should get, or explain how to get a 504 plan. The school’s own staff and processes handle that.
- Give advice to a classmate who tells you about their own health. Listen, and point them to a parent, the school nurse, a counselor, or their doctor.
None of this makes you less credible. Knowing where your role ends is part of what makes you credible.