Malariology
December 18th
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/index.cfm/go/viewCourse/course/malariology/coursePage/index/
This course is quite the opposite of Malaria101; instead of rapidly skimming through topics, it goes into great detail. However, a lot of detailed topics didn’t seem of particular use. Thankfully, it is organized in separate sessions, allowing you to skip the ones that seem less pertinent. Although it definitely offered more information on treatment and diagnosis than the other course, I found the format made it difficult to retain information well. I’d likely consult a different resource if needed in the future.
Malaria 101
December 17th
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/cme/malaria/course.html
Like the Tuberculosis Basics module, this course reviews basic information regarding malaria. It serves as a good overview, but definitely does no suffice to fully understand diagnostic and treatment approaches. It’s simply a decent way to slowly introduce the topic before using another resource for more complete understanding.
Tuberculosis Basics
December 16th
https://www.globalhealthlearning.org/course/tuberculosis-basics
This course reviews basic information about TB (transmission, diagnosis, treatment, prevention) and discusses a few specialized topics (DOT, TB + HIV co-infection). This serves as a good introduction and reminder of important concepts, particularly regarding the challenges of diagnosing, but it’s likely insufficient if planning on working in areas with a high TB prevalence. There was also a lengthily description specifically on USAID’ s TB strategy which I didn’t find of much use.
Global Health eLearning Center Certificate – Tuberculosis Basics
Ethical Challenges in Short-Term Global Health Training
December 14th
http://ethicsandglobalhealth.org/index.shtml
This short course was a useful reminder of issues that are likely to be encountered when working abroad. Although the answers to the quizzes themselves weren’t particularly insightful (it was always the same answer), the discussion following each case usually offered interested learning points that I hadn’t considered.
Water and Sanitation
December 13th
http://cugh.org/sites/default/files/16%20Environmental%20Health.pdf
Although this course simply uses uploaded slides to discuss quite a broad topic, the detailed descriptions following each slide ensured that no information was lost. This module not only serves as a perfect introduction to water and sanitation issues, but also covers certain topics in detail, which I appreciated. All information regarding infrastructure was new to me, so I particularly enjoyed learning about this and discussing the different systems with my partner, an engineer interesting in working with MSF.
I believe I could also appreciate this module more after completing the Humanitarian Response to Conflict and Disaster course, where the mistakes and lessons learned around water and sanitation in Goma were discussed in detail. I therefore could complete a case study by the end of this course, thinking of solutions workers in Goma may have or could have attempted.
Nutrition (An Introduction)
December 12th
https://www.globalhealthlearning.org/course/nutrition-introduction
This course focuses mainly on malnutrition and introduces interventions to help vulnerable populations in particular while discussing the particular challenges faced. Also, and perhaps most importantly, methods to measure and assess the severity of malnutrition are also explained, which will undoubtedly be useful in clinical settings abroad. I appreciated how the course emphasized the importance of addressing malnutrition an a young age, some of which were surprising to me : “The effects of malnutrition suffered during the critical 1,000 days of pregnancy through 2 years of age are largely irreversible after that time”.
To complete my case study, I was asked to assess the rate of severe acute malnutrition in Zimbabwe. As per UNICEF, in 2016, the country was facing its worst rates of malnutrition in 15 years: “Overall, 2.1 per cent of children under-five years have severe acute malnutrition. This is slightly higher than the international threshold of 2 per cent required for an emergency response.” (1)
I will likely need to re-read this module and the resources cited before heading to Zimbabwe!
(1) https://www.unicef.org/zimbabwe/media_18004.html
Global Health eLearning Center Certificate – Nutrition (An Introduction)
Immunization Essentials
December 12th
https://www.globalhealthlearning.org/course/immunization-essentials
This course helps understand the different steps in implementing functional immunization programs. The first chapters focused on explaining broad concepts of immunizations while the following chapters discussed concrete ways of using this knowledge in Global Health settings. There are definitely a few chapters very useful to physicians looking to work in resource-limited settings, as they give simple ways to monitor vaccine efficiency. Short quizzes at the beginning and end of chapters also help solidify new concepts learned.
Global Health eLearning Center Certificate – Immunization Essentials
Humanitarian Response to Conflict and Disaster (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and HarvardX)
Nov 11th- Dec 11th
This is a 4-week course that uses significant passed humanitarian crises to discuss the principles in humanitarian response while putting developments into historical context.
After learning about the Humanitarian Principles and elements of International Humanitarian Law, we’re invited to put this framework into practice by reflecting upon difficult humanitarian crises that have occurred. At the end of each case, lecturers with impressive backgrounds in humanitarian response share their personal experience and opinions.
This is an important course for anyone interested in international medicine. It highlights various ethical challenges faced in the passed and the negative consequences of ignoring the complexities of humanitarian response, especially in conflict zones. It also allows a better understanding of laws, guidebooks and principles followed today by explaining when and why these were developed.
Improving the Health of Women, Children and Adolescents: from Evidence to Action (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/women-children-health/
Oct. 2nd-Nov 10th
This is a 6-week course covering one different topic each week: adolescent health, reproductive health, maternal health and safe motherhood, newborns and stillbirths, child health and putting women and children’s health together.
The videos and articles were concise, very interesting and well organized. Despite not usually being one to participate much in forums online, the discussions during this course were actually quite interesting and pushed me to post more than once. After this course, I’m even considering applying to an online masters in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
I was pleased that the SDGs and MDGs were discussed, topics I had only heard of previously when attending Public Health teachings this last month, yet essential to Global Health. I also particularly enjoyed how the modules underlined topics of importance that are rarely discussed despite being surprisingly important. The topics that come to mind are adolescent health, reproductive health and stillbirths.
Courses on maternal and child health rarely discuss adolescents, which I had never found surprising until going through the module, learning statistics such as : “mortality rates are now considerably higher among 20-24yo than in 1-4yo in high income countries as well as some low and middle-income countries”. I learned about particular challenges for adolescents in the Global Health setting for the first time: difficulty accessing HIV screening due to need for consent from a guardian, poor adherence to HIV treatment, high failure rates given dose inefficacy related to rapid changes in weight.
In the reproductive health module, they focused on the motto “Every Birth Wanted” and started by stating: “along with leaving fossil fuels, stopping the oceans fro acidifying, contraception is one way in which we can produce a decent world for our ancestors”, which truly puts facts into perspective. I was also surprised to learn that including Malta, a country part of the EU, doesn’t allow abortions for any reason, even to save the mother’s life. And Chile just eased their complete abortion ban in August 2017 thanks to their female president.
Finally, they emphasized how stillbirths aren’t accounted for when analyzing newborn mortality, encouraging us to rethink statistics presented to truly identify issues needing to be addressed.
An Introduction to Population Health
https://www.coursera.org/learn/population-health
Aug 26th-Sept 24th
This course is intended to understand the basics of population health. I thought that this would be perfect for me, as I considered my knowledge in the domain to indeed be quite basic. However, many learners taking this course have no background in health-care nor statistics. Definitions such as Incidence, Prevalence and Risk learned in my early years of medical school were explained. I therefore found the course quite long.
If you just listen to the videos, I don’t think the learning experience is worthwhile. It’s mainly taking the time to look through the suggested reading for subjects of interest that made this course more pertinent. They also suggest we participate in group discussions, but most of the posts were published years ago. I indeed didn’t finish this course, as the last week we are asked to complete a reflective essay and post it in the forum for discussion. Since there were no active conversations, I didn’t feel motivated to write an essay nobody would read.
CCIRH Refugee Course
Sept 24th-27th
I found this course well structured and easy to navigate through. It summarized basic concepts that need to be understood before working with refugees quite well, while reminding us of the importance of caring for this population.
There were short case discussions in each section which I found particularly interesting. They were accompanied by reflective questions, which were quite challenging to answer. Thankfully, the cases were followed by short videos of people with expertise in refugee health explaining how they would manage each case.
I was looking forward to starting my learning in refugee health, as it’s my main area of interest in Global Health. I expected the modules to be a simple introduction, and ended up being pleasantly surprised by the cases provided. The most interesting for me though was without a doubt the resources suggested after each section. I read very interesting articles, watched a short film and even ended up purchasing a book by James Orbinski, described in the modules as a role-model in international health.