Obgyn Training in Sub-Saharan Africa Bolstered By New Collections Shared Both Online and Offline

Monday, April 6, 2015

High-quality, obstetric care is a critical factor in reducing maternal and newborn deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa, but local barriers like the availability of training materials, licensing costs and unreliable Internet access can prevent incoming obstetricians and gynecologists (Obgyns) and midwives from being trained with the best educational materials available.

Now, providers and students in low-resource countries will have access to high-quality academic learning and teaching materials through a new collection created by the University of Michigan’s 1000+ OBGYNs Project – a network of American and African universities preparing to train more than 1,000 new Obgyns in the region in 10 years.

Through a grant from the World Bank, the University of Michigan Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology partnered with the Department of Learning Health Sciences and the Open.Michigan Initiative within Medical School Information Services to develop additional collections to specifically support graduate medical education for OBGYNs in sub-Saharan Africa. Through this collaboration, the 1000+ OBGYN Project was able to effectively draw upon existing open educational resources from Michigan, Ghana, Ethiopia, and other medical schools around the world and to review, curate, and organize them for a learner audience of OBGYN residents.

The four new collections developed by this partnership cover a diverse range of subjects, including abnormal uterine bleeding, pregnancy complications, vaginal surgeries, pelvic masses, newborn care, postpartum care and family planning. All materials are publicly available, free and licensed for students, teachers and practitioners to copy and modify to suit their curricular context within their own institutions.

Partnership with the Global Library of Women’s Medicine: USB Distribution

In addition to making this new collection of materials available online, the 1000+ OBGYN Project partnered with the Global Library of Women’s Medicine (GLOWM.com), which has also developed a large and expertly-curated collection of free women’s health materials – including textbooks, training videos and tutorials – on their website. Recently GLOWM developed an initiative to expand access to their online collection by compressing the entire library onto USB flash drives, 500 of which they have now distributed globally, particularly to women’s health professionals in Africa through their Ambassador program.

Source: University of Michigan Health System (link opens in a new window)

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Education, Health Care, Technology