| Resources | No.41 June 2004 |

Supercourse: A Network of Preventionists linked through Telepreventive Medicine Ronald E LaPorte & Sunita Dodani, United States of America |
In most developing countries, there has been a 25-year increase in life expectancy during the last century.1 This increase is greater than that seen at any time in history. The increased longevity is, almost exclusively, due to public health.1-3 In developing countries, public health improvements are the promise of improved health in the 21st century. Public health is, mostly, information transfer, teaching people how to find clean water, changing life styles, and disease monitoring.4 Despite living in an era of industrialization and urbanization, low literacy, gender inequality, high fertility, socio-economic extremes, and minimal investment in health and education further exacerbate the situation of public health. At the same time, the pace of technological change is exponential., yet the technologies being used for information transfer are at times somewhat limited. If public health were to grasp onto the information revolution, we would see the third age of public health, after sanitation and immunization, that of the information age.3-5 By the end of this century, the Internet may have reached every part of the globe. 5 Telepreventive medicine, a term coined by its founder, Ronald E LaPorte, is characterized by low bandwidth information transfer about prevention reaching large numbers of people.9 In contrast, telemedicine collects high bandwidth information about cure on a small number of people. Telemedicine may be somewhat limited, but telepreventive medicine goes beyond to improve health, applying the latest information technologies to global disease prevention. Recently, we have argued that the best approach towards improving training is to improve the "content" (e.g. lectures). A global system of shareware lectures has been established. LaPorte and collegues created the Global Health Network, “Supercourse” (http://www.pitt.edu/~super1). This effort was originally funded by NASA6,7 and now is funded by the National Library of Medicine. The University of Pittsburgh is responsible for the operation of it, with technical support from NASA and IBM.7 Currently, there are approximately 15,000 participants from more than 151 countries, with around 40% from developing countries. The concept of telepreventive medicine is simple; PowerPoint lectures about prevention are captured and then are made available to all teachers, worldwide with no copyright. This exciting initiative has had great success in disseminating public health and preventive medicine concepts around the world. Currently, 1800 PowerPoint lectures on prevention have been collected, the largest number ever assembled in the public health arena. This includes lectures from 8 Noble Prize winners, 70 members of the IOM, a former head of the United States (US) Centre for Disease Control, Jeff Koplan, the Surgeon General of the US, and 4 directors from the National Institute for Health. Please visit www.pitt.edu/~super1 to learn more about the concept, which is essentially quite simple - most of the 30 year increase in life expectancy world wide has been the result of prevention. By harnessing the power of information technology, a profound effect on education and prevention can be made. Initially, a network of over 13,000 scientists was created. Using this network a single ‘golden’ lecture on prevention was introduced into thousands of schools, world wide. Over 300,000 students in 128 countries took part in this project. The latest step in this project, is the creation of a Supercourse Lecture on physical activity and health. A draft exists at www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec15451/index.htm. A step further is to establish an Olympic supercourse in collaboration with the United States Olympic Committee. The presentation on Olympic supercourse is also available on www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec15661/index.htm and comments are most welcome. References: The World Health Report 2001. Mental health: new understanding, new hope. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2001. The World Health Report 1999. Making a difference in people's lives: achievements and challenges. Geneva, World Health Organization, 1999. The World Health Report 1997. Fighting disease, fostering development. Geneva, World Health Organization, 1997. Institute of Medicine, Committee for the Study of the Future of Public Health, Division of Health Care Services. 1988. The Future of Public Health. National Academy Press, Washington, DC. LaPorte RE. How to improve monitoring and forecasting of disease patterns. BMJ 1993; 307: 1573-4. [Medline] LaPorte RE, Akazawa S, Boostrom E, Campos M, Gamboa C, Gooch T, et al. Global public health and the information superhighway: global health network university proposed. BMJ 1994; 309:736-7. 10. LaPorte RE, Barinas E, Chang YF, Libman I. Global epidemiology and public health in the 21st century. Applications of new technology. Ann Epidemiol 1996 Mar; 6(2):162-7. Ronald E LaPorte & Sunita Dodani Disease Monitoring and Telecommunications WHO Collaborating Centre Professor of Epidemiology Graduate School of Public Health University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15261 USA Ronlaporte@aol.com sud9+@pitt.edu http://www.icsspe.org/portal/bulletin-June2004.htm Supercourse: A Network of Preventionists linked through Telepreventive Medicine Ronald E LaPorte & Sunita Dodani, United States of America