 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Ronald E. LaPorte, PhD, Department of Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health, 3512 Fifth ave, room 310, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, 412-383-2746, ronlaporte@aol.com
Public health and medical education in the Latin American and Caribbean countries is suffering from lack of access to the latest research materials on medicine and public health. Digital divide, separating North and South America, impedes scientific growth and gets in a way of effective teaching in the schools of public health outside US and Canada. Supercourse, a global library of lectures on public health and prevention, provides an effective teaching tool Latin American and Caribbean scientists. Supercourse is a network of over 9000 faculty from 148 countries who are sharing for free their best lectures. The main features of the Supercourse are ease of access, minimal cost, and high quality content. Statistical quality control procedures developed by Deming for industry are utilized to evaluate the quality of the Supercourse lectures. Spanish language Supercourse network has over 300 faculty members from Latin American countries and over 20 lectures in Spanish. Supercourse developed strong links with the ministry of health of Mexico and other Latin American countries. Supercourse has 7 mirror servers in Latin America with over 1000 Supercourse CDs distributed in Latin America since 2000. In order to bridge the digital divide between North and South America, more Projects like Supercourse need to be developed and implemented. With the development of better on-line machine translation tools over the past several years, access to the educational materials is improving. Access to low bandwidth high quality preventive information might offer the best solution to public health deficiencies in Latin American countries.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Developing Countries, Education
Related Web page: www.pitt.edu/~super1
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: none
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.