Supercourse Newsletter April 29,2005
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I said to Life, I would hear Death speak. And Life raised her
voice a little higher and said, You hear him now.
--Kahlil Gibran
The response to the �living Will� of lectures was very gratify-
ing. Many of you from across the world have agreed to have me
come visit you right you �move on over� to the other side so
that I can immediate extract the lectures on your hard drive
while they are still viable so that we can give life to assis-
tant professor�s lectures world wide. We have developed the
�lecture donor card� which says prominently �upon my last heart-
beat, my lectures are donated to the Supercourse�. We are
pleased to send these to you all.
The Media is the Message:
We have been talking with Paul Zimmet who is one of the premier
diabetes researchers in the world. He and George Alberti will be
providing definitions of the Metabolic Syndrome developed with
the International Diabetes Federation for the Supercourse to
help distribute partially in lecture format world wide. It has
been fascinating to think about these as well as the Golden lec-
ture and the JIT lectures. The Supercourse has been able to dem-
onstrate that we can take a single prevention/health lecture,
and we can distribute this world wide, using a snowballing pro-
cedure. We in epidemiology view this like a virus with you �in-
fecting� someone you know with the Supercourse prevention infor-
mation. We have two issues, the first is the message. The mes-
sage, however, is nothing unless there is a distribution chain,
to which the Supercourse provides. Once infected with the Super-
course message virus, then you will never be the same.
What is most cool about this is that with new tracking systems
we can watch as the message spreads across the world. We can see
what areas receive the message, and what do not. We can track
the Ebola Supercourse prevention virus. We will follow the trail
of the Supercourse Messenger, as it distributes prevention in-
formation around the world.
This can be very powerful. If we have a message on prevention,
we can get this message of prevention to spread across the con-
tinents in days. What a potentially very powerful system.
Go� Global Pit. We have begun to establish a system called
Global Pit. The concept is that we want to build systems from
Local to Global. Global health now needs people from many dif-
ferent disciplines. Sending a 2nd year medical student to the
site of a disaster gives the student a �medical vacation� but
does little to help the people in that country. Global health
needs administrators, epidemiologists, lawyers, architects, and
engineers. We have been recruiting at the University of Pitts-
burgh faculty from many different disciplines which likely can
help improve global health. If you are interested in developing
an interdisciplinary program such as this for �Global Havana�,
or �Global Guam�, or �Global Bombay�, or �Global Xi�an�, or
�Global Santiago�, or �Global Cairo� let us know, and we can
grow these all together. Eugene put an overview of Global Pit at
www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec19931/001.htm. We would love to
have your comments.
Lecture of the week
Did you even need to teach basic epidemiology to middle school
or high school students and did not know what to present? If the
answer is yes, you definitely need to check Mark Kaelin�s cur-
riculum that can be accessed through
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/index1.htm or
http://www.montclair.edu/detectives/
Mark is the director of �Detectives in the Classroom� program
and one of the best epidemiology educators in the world. The
curriculum consists of 34 investigations (lessons) that are di-
vided into five modules. Good luck with teaching the youngsters!
Knock, Knock
Sadly, the trees around Pittsburgh are being taken down. The
woodpeckers look for a place to nest, our house is wood. We have
woodpeckers making holes in our house, and finding a very nice
place to nest in our attic. Does anyone want a few wood peck-
ers!!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization"
Best regards from Global Pit: Ron, Faina, Eugene, Mita, Soni,
Woody, Paul, Pit, Tom, Deb
mailto:MitaL@pitt.edu