Global Public Health Campus Initiative

University of Iowa: College of Public Health, Center for International Rural and Environmental Health, WiderNet Project, Virtual Hospital, Center for Credit Programs, Colleges of Business and Engineering. Colleagues in Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Peru. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health. Association of Schools of Public Health

Application Domain:

Distance education, Public health, Collaborative systems, Application/data sharing

Supporting Networks:

Enhanced local area networks via WiderNet

End-points/Clients:

Elluminate Live! for application sharing and audio, H.323 for videoconferencing

Use:

Global Public Health Campus (GPHC) is proposed as a mechanism whereby individuals from countries throughout the world could receive continuing education and/or a degree in Public Health from The University of Iowa and other Association of Schools of Public Health-affiliated (ASPH) institutions. While meeting the same rigorous academic standards as on-campus programs, GPHC courses and curricula are designed to be conducted entirely off-campus using appropriate information and communications technology (ICT), distance education methods, and adjunct faculty liaisons. Use of these technologies and methods removes the constraints of time and location that currently defined Public Health education. Over the last several years, the UI Center for International Rural and Environmental Health (CIREH) has been investigating and evaluating various distance learning technologies to augment its international training activities – none of which have been entirely feasible or appropriate. Now, we are seeing newer information technology and its affordability converging with the needs of our foreign institutions. Other colleagues (from the WiderNet Project, continuing and distance education and Virtual Hospital) have also seen this happening. We are now in a position to propose a Global Public Health Campus initiative using four levels of information and communication technology depending on the state of electronic connectivity available to affiliated foreign institutions around the globe. These levels are:

• Level I. Enhanced Local Area Networks that provide affordable, appropriate asynchronous instruction (with daily satellite updates) through expansion of the technology used by the UI WiderNet Project in those institutions having only a local area network (intranet).
• Level II. Web-Based courses and resources that provide instruction and information to students at institutions having only a minimal level of real-time internet access, i.e., slow intermittent connections. Examples of programs that utilize this level of asynchronous technology are Blackboard and WebCT. The UI Virtual Hospital is another web-based, Public Health information resource that can be utilized by those with this level of connectivity.
• Level III. Graphics-Plus-Audio technology that provides synchronous (live) and pre-recorded instruction to institutions having a minimum reliable internet connection speed of 28.8 Kb/sec. The UI has the capability to provide graphic/text materials along with real-time two-way "audio over IP" to as many as 100 sites world-wide using a system called Elluminate Live.
• Level IV. Interactive Video technology (video conferencing) provides synchronous interactive videobased instruction to institutions having an uninterrupted, reliable internet connection speed of 128 Kb/sec or higher. UI has used Polycom technology to deliver this type of instruction to a number of collaborating institutions in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

The technology to be used in each country or region is likely to change over time as the level of internet connectivity increases. In the short term, tremendous strides can be made to improve Public Health practices throughout the world by using communication and information technology that is appropriate, affordable, and best meets the current educational needs of developing countries. The University of Iowa is uniquely positioned to provide leadership in this important global effort. No comprehensive program like this is currently known to exist.

Notes:

University of Iowa, Center for International Rural and Environmental Health [28]
University of Iowa, Center for Credit Programs Distance Education [29]
University of Iowa, WiderNet [30]
University of Iowa, College of Public Health Distance Education Resources [31]

Contact:

Les Finken, University of Iowa, les-finken@uiowa.edu