1. Winds of Change Prepared for the Asia Pacific Health Forum (APHF 2005)
Supercourse and Disaster Management Training
Nov. 22, 2005
Ronald E. LaPorte, Ph.D.
Professor of Epidemiology
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15090
USA
There are major changes occurring in the disaster and preparedness. The key to these changes are information and knowledge.
Winds of Change

2. Top 50 in the Past 50 year Wen-Ta Chiu, M.D., DrPH
GSPH
Uni. of Pittsburgh
This effort comes from the Graduate School of Public health to which both Professor Chiu and LaPorte graduated. Dr. Chiu was identified as one of the top 50 graduates of the GSPH.
Top 50 in the Past 50 year
Wen-Ta Chiu, M.D., DrPH

3. Global Health Network Connect Everyone in Prevention
The core to our efforts is the building of a Global Health Network. The concept is simple, the Global Health Network is designed to connect everyone in public health world wide and use this powerful human disease to prevent disease.

4. 1995 2005 5 Countries All Countries African Connectivity
Connectivity has speeded along, faster than most other technologies. In just a 10 year period of time all countries in Africa became connected..
5 Countries
All Countries

5. 1/13
The speed of connectivity can be seen with now over 1/13 citizens in Africa having a cell phone. We can reach almost all villiages and towns in Africa now, in comparison 20 years ago it might take 2 weeks to reach people in isolated villages.

6. Our work has been completed in collaboration with many different agencies. NASA has proven to be the most supportive by giving us 3 different grants.

7. What are the characteristics of factors that could improve global health?
Prevent Multiple diseases
Apply in many places world wide
Proven Effectiveness
Cheap, Cheap, Cheap
Sustainable
There are very few items that can prevent multiple diseases, can be applied in many places, that are effective and inexpensive, and which are sustainable. One of these, we believe is prevention knowledge.
Prevention Knowledge

8. WHO Collaborating Center
GSPH
Janice Dorman, Ph.D. Director Molecular Epidemiology Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D. Director Disease Monitoring and Telecommunications
Our work comes from our WHO collaborating Centre here in Pittsburgh

9. What is the new global language of research and teaching?
The new global language is PowerPoint with over 100 million presentations done each day, 95% of which are PowerPoint

10. Largest Global Prevention Project? www.pitt.edu/~super1/
We have likely built the largest global prevention project.

11. Supercourse Core Faina Mita Ron Eunryoung Eugene Soni Akira
We have a wonderful global group of collaborators from all different nationalities.
Abed
Monica
Ezzeldeen
Rania

12. How can we improve Prevention education worldwide?
Question:
How can we improve Prevention education worldwide?
Answer:
The concept of the Supercourse is simple To improve the teaching of epidemiology, global health and the Internet in medical, veterinary, nursing schools one can improve the lectures. We hope to work to establish a supercourse for many areas of science. It is an open source system.
Get better lectures

13. Why don’t we share our most exciting PowerPoint lectures for free?
But how do I get better
lectures?
Why don’t we share our most exciting PowerPoint lectures for free?
Sharing is the key, using an open source model. It is exciting to see how willing people are to share.

14. 30,000 Faculty 151 Countries Global Health Network
The Supercourse has risen beyond our dreams. Currently we have over 30,000 scientists who have joined.

15. 151 30,000 192 3500 43 Comparing Supercourse, WHO and CDC <500
Countries
Participants
151
30,000
192
3500 43
<500
(8,500 total)
We have many more collaborators than WHO and CDC. The Supercourse is targeted exclusively to educational instititutions.

16. 2384
We have the world’s largest collection of prevention lectures

17. Nobel Prize Laureates in the Supercourse (Medicine)
Eric R. Kandel (2000)
Paul C Lauterbur (2003)
Gunter Blobel (1999)
Paul Greengard (2000)
Baruch S. Blumberg (1976)
Joshua Lederberg (1958)
Nobel Prize Laureates in the Supercourse (Medicine)
These Nobel prize winners have, or will shortly provided Supercourse lectures

18. Teacher
Resource
The supercourse is designed to reach the teachers, not to be used directly by the students.

19. $0.01/Student Cost Effectiveness 20,000 students x 5 yrs.
100,000 students trained
$1000/100,000
Our approach is very cost effective. In comparison standardized distance learning my run over $100 per student per hour, which is 100,000 greater than our approach.
$0.01/Student

20. Top 100 PC Magazine Top 11 Medical Pages Lancet 75 million hits/year
150 publications on IT
~300 International publications
(including 32 in BMJ, Lancet, Nature, Nature Med, PNAS)
Our work has received numerous accolades, including identified as one of the top health web pages by the Lancet, 75 million hits a year, and being in the top 100 of PC magazine.
Top 100
PC Magazine

21. We have build large networks in Russia (500), Pakistan (620), India (400), etc.

22. Our Islamic network has over 1800 members.

23. We have build Just-in-Time lectures which are developed within days of a disaster.

24. Just-in-Time Lectures
Just in Time lectures are those who are developed by experts within days after a major health event. One of the first was with SARS

25. Supercourse Format PowerPoint .pdf Web Cast Web Archive Web Download
Pod Cast
The Cutler lecture is the major international health lecture at the University of Pittsburgh. We set this up in 7 different formats to try and reach as many people as possible. The goal is to reach 1 million, the largest number of people learning from one lecture, ever.

26. Katrina
April 29
We planned the Cutler lecture well before Katrina hit the US.

27. Within a day before after the Katrina hit we build an outstanding lecture concerning the science of hurricanes. Thirty meteorologists helped us.

28. RITA April 30 Just-in-Time Lecture What is a Hurricane
Amazingly within days after Katrina as second more powerful hurricane came ashore, Rita.
RITA

29. Rita
With we focused on the prodrome period, that period where it was apparent that the hurricane was about to cause major morbidity and mortality.
Prodrome: forewarning symptom: a symptom indicating the onset of a disease

30. 5-day Prodrome Sept. 25 Sept. 20
There was a five day period where we could mobilize lectures and people.
Sept. 20
Sept. 25
5-day Prodrome

31. Rita Prodrome Sept. 21 Email to all 300 GHNet people TX
Sept. 22 Steve Warren Dist lecture to all schools 6-16 in Texas and all Epidemiologist
Sept. 22 talking with head Allegheny County Intermediate Unit, to all schools in Pennsylvania, and 42 State Education Departments.
In 2 days we established an effective internet based distribution system to almost all of the states and schools.

32. We want to prevent children, and us from being afraid
We want to prevent children, and us from being afraid. Educators, teachers, and mentors need the best possible information quickly to prevent the buildup of fear, and to dissipate fear after it has arisen.

33. We look forward to your help in this regard. Khawar
We are now working in Pakistan to reduce the epidemiology of fear.
One segment which I feel we need to reach out first, are schools all over Pakistan but particularly in cities like Lahore and Islamabad who experienced earthquake but fortunately escaped with out major damage. These young minds are also affected by the stories of hundreds of young students who have lost their lives in other areas.
We look forward to your help in this regard.
Khawar  

34. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. FDR, 1937
Fear typically causes long term damage throughout a whole country.
Fears are educated into us & can, if we wish, be educated out. — Karl A. Menninger

35. JIT Pakistan Disaster Lecture
Distribution Network
Distribute lectures throughout Pakistan
US AID
We hope to reach 5-10 million children in Pakistan

36.
We just recently presented an outstanding lecture on Avian flu by Rashid Chotani.

37. Total = 1063 Supercourse Members South East Asia Bangladesh 14
Myanmar 7
Cambodia 6
Afghanistan
Mongolia 4
Fiji Island 3
Papua NG
Tonga 2
Bhutan 1
Laos 1
Samoa 1
Solomon Is
Taiwan 224
Australia
Japan 163
China 124
Malaysia
Thailand 57
South Korea 44
Indonesia 38
Singapore 21
Philippines 19
Nepal 16
New Zealand 24
Vietnam
Sri Lanka 15
We have many friends in from South East Asia, with over 1000 collaborators.
Total = 1063