Supercourse Newsletter, February 14 2002
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Dear Friends,
Valentine's Day
We are writing this newsletter on Valentine's day. We ask you all to
be our valentine, as you are our friends. Valentine's day is a nice
holiday, no day off, but you get to give a small gift to your sweet
heart. Even though most of you do not celebrate, why not give a gift
to your partner? Alternative, why not give a supercourse CD to every-
one you love!!!
Epidemiology of the Supercourse
The Supercourse is rolling along. Since Eugene Shubnikov left a large
number of lectures have come in. We are now pushing 5,000 members of
the supercourse. We currently have 4,931 people who have joined. The
number of lectures are 624, with many more coming in. We thought we
would have only 150 lectures at this point, not 4 times as many. We
think we can achieve 1,000 lectures which would be very exciting.
FSU National Supercourse
When Eugene Shubnikov was here, he decided to move forward on a For-
mer Soviet Union Supercourse. About a year ago, we tried to get off
the ground National Supercourses. We send out information about the
concept. The idea was that we would have one person available in each
country to collect health indicator information. Both WHO and the
World Bank have this information, but it is not very user friendly,
in that it is in tables, ours will be in PowerPoint slides. Also, we
can update the National Supercourses as the data themselves are up-
dated, thus our data will be more timely. By having the health indi-
ces in a user friendly format, e.g. PowerPoint, we can get it into
the classrooms of the world very quickly. Also, it will be rapidly
updated. Our system is different than WHO and World Bank, in that it
is a graphic format, simple and timely. We do not compete with them,
we compliment them.
When we first started we were discouraged as only 30 countries
joined. However, now we will focus on the FSU countries. Each will
provide the data, and either we will put it up on our server, or they
will bring up the national supercourse at their university or MOH.
They will be designed as the head of the national supercourse.
Eugene will describe more in subsequent newsletters as to what he is
developing. It should be a lot of fun. If you have any ideas, please
send them to <ronlaporte@aol.com>.
Bioterrorism
Anne Rhonan for Australia sent us a beautiful idea. What she pointed
out is that the epidemiology of bioterrorism is not really the epide-
miology of an infectious disease. Instead, it is the epidemiology of
fear. Isn't that a fantastic concept? The reality is that the damage
that is done with bioterrorism is almost all done with fear. We in
epidemiology can help to dissolve this fear through education.
Olympics
The Supercourse Olympic team is doing quite well this year, I believe
we already have 3 gold and 2 silver medals. We are strongest in the
speed of lecture development and distribution, no one could touch
us!!
Best Regards from the Supercourse Team:
Ron, Akira, EunRyoung, Faina, Mita, Eugene, Fan, Abed, Rania,
Beatriz, Tom, Deb, Grace, Fred, Kiran
mailto: super2+@pitt.edu
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