Supercourse Update - April 2000
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Friends:
It has been another exciting week for the Supercourse. Once again we
thank all of you for helping to establish this global lecture-
shareware effort on e-prevention.
In the Lancet of April 15, we published a letter titled "Information
Dominance over Disease", where we argued that we need to take a mili-
tary approach to the prevention of disease. This is presented below.
Major General Randolph of the USAF provided important insight into
military philosophy that could be applied to prevention. Military
strategy in the past has been very useful for prevention, it could
also be useful now. What was most interesting in the edition of the
Lancet is that one of the early faculty members of the super course,
Jimmy Volmink, has a great article titled "Directly observed therapy
and treatment adherence".
Springtime has had a wonderful effect on lecture production. In only
7 weeks we have had an amazing 11 lectures put onto the web, with di-
verse and exciting topics ranging from the molecular level to the so-
cial level. The lectures are both beautiful and informative. The ti-
tles are below. We thank everyone.
We are expanding one new area of the Supercourse, that of the Inter-
net lectures. Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet has agreed to
provide a lecture. John Patrick, V.P. of IBM has already provided a
wonderful lecture, and now has new links to update this. Howard Char-
ney, Senior Vice President of Cisco has contributed a wonderful pres-
entation. We are now approaching high level Internet people to pro-
vide for us lectures on the history and future of the Internet from
their perspective. The best way for the students to learn about the
Internet across the world is to be taught by the leaders of the
Internet revolution. We will work to obtain as many lectures as pos-
sible from the leaders in the field. We hope that in a few years stu-
dents can learn from the Ministry of Telecommunications from Germany,
the President of Sony, the Head of AOL, etc. If you know of high
level Internet experts who might want to be included in the Super-
course, please let us know.
Our National Library of Medicine grant begins May 1. With this we are
developing a system to rapidly capture a lecture of yours by merely
having it video taped, or provide us the slides, with a voice re-
cording of your lecture. We want to reduce the burden on the instruc-
tors to merely having your lecture taped, and we then bring it onto
the Supercourse for you. It might be possible in the future to have
not 200 lectures, but 10,000, all completely searchable, and all
slides "branded" with the person who provided it to make sure in this
open system of freeware, everyone gets credit. We would very much ap-
preciate your thoughts as to how best to develop a video-to-
Supercourse system that reduces the burden on the faculty. As we de-
velop this we will keep you informed. We are targeting the fall se-
mester, beginning in Sept. to beginning using this approach. We are
also now ready to push for the mirroring of the Supercourse through-
out Latin America with Dr. Casas and PAHO.
Abdullatif Husseni meets with one of the original developers of the
Global Health Network, Eugene Boostrom, M.D. who is from the World
Bank, this week in Palestine. Abudllatif is planning the development
of a Palestine Supercourse, which may be expanded into other Arab
countries. Dr. Songer from Pittsburgh will be meeting with him in
Palestine in June. Rimma Potemtemka, and Sergeeich Glasunow have been
in contact with Eugene Shobnikov who is in Pittsburgh for 4 months.
Two papers are being developed, the first on the application of e-
prevention to Russia, and secondly the current state of public health
and the Internet in Russia. Eugene is also developing the groundwork
for a Russian Supercourse. Dr. Wang will be present about the Super-
course at a major Epidemiology meeting in China, here too, with Dr
Yang Ze guiding the work a Chinese Heritage Supercourse is evolving.
Best regards from:
Ron, Akira, Deb, Tom, Eun Ryoung, Eugene, Benjamin, Beatriz
mailto:Ronlaporte@aol.com
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New Lectures put onto the Web:
April:
Gastric Cancer Epidemiology - Prof. Sominori Kono
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec0981/index.html
Injury Epidemiology - Participatory Action Research and Quantitative
Approaches in Small Populations - Prof. Lorann Stallones
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec1031/index.htm
Introduction to Program Evaluation - Drs. Lizzette Rojas and Florde-
liz Serpa, Professional Research and Evaluation Group
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec0991/index.htm
Introduction to Focus Groups - Drs. Lizzette Rojas and Flordeliz
Serpa, Professional Research and Evaluation Group
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec1081/001.htm
Studying Health and Health Care - Drs. Leslie L. Roos, Noralou P.
Roos Charlyn D. Black, Ruth-Ann Soodeen, and Eileen Pyke
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec1011/index.htm
Introduction to Needs Assessments - Drs. Lizzette Rojas and Flordeliz
Serpa, Professional Research and Evaluation Group
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec1021/index.htm
SPSS ANOVA - Dr. Miquel A. Belmonte with Hospital General de Castel-
lon
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec1071/index.htm
March:
Toxoplasma: a Fetal and Sometimes Fatal Parasite - Dr. Angel Criado,
Laboratorio de parasitologia, Facultad de Farmacia Universidad de Al-
cala de Henares, Spain
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec0941/index.htm
Q repeat 9 interval amino acid forms in man and pathogen - Dr. Mark
McGary
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec0521/index.htm
The Epidemiology of Human-Animal Interactions: Part III Animals as
Sentinels of Environmental Hazards - Drs. Nita and Larry Glickman,
Purdue University
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec0961/index.htm
Questionnaire Design: An Introduction - Drs. Lizzette Rojas and
Flordeliz Serpa, Professional Research and Evaluation
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec0971/index.htm
--
Lancet Apr. 15, 2000
Information Dominance over Disease
Ronald E. LaPorte, Ph.D. (ronlaporte@aol.com) Professor Department of
Epidemiology University of Pittsburgh
Major General Leonard M. Randolph, Jr.
(Randy.Randolph@USAFSG.Bolling.af.mil) Assistant Surgeon General USAF
Francois Sauer, M.D. (sauer_francois@email.msn.com), Akira Seki-
kawa,M.D., Ph.D. (akira+@pitt.edu) and Deborah Aaron, Ph.D.
(aaron+@pitt.edu), University of Pittsburgh
We are in a WAR against disease. How can we win this war in the 21st
century? Perhaps we should take on a military strategy. The most re-
cent developments in Military Strategy were the result of major
changes in information technology (IT). This has not occurred in
health. The military strategy of the cold war in the 50s, was mutu-
ally assured destruction with the establishment of a nuclear umbrella
over our countries. After the fall of the Soviet Union, warfare mark-
edly changed, the Iraq, Kosovo, and Bosnia wars were won with pin-
point surgical strikes rather than carpet bombing and nuclear annihi-
lation. Iraqi and NATO troops had similar numbers of soldiers and ar-
mament. Iraqi troops were battle hardened as a result of 8 years
fighting against Iran, whereas our troops were green. Yet for every
NATO troop who died, there were 670 Iraqi troops killed. In Kosovo
10,000 Serbian troops were incapacitated, in contrast no NATO troops
were killed. The reason for superiority was the introduction of a
powerful warfare strategy, Information Dominance. With the Informa-
tion Dominance, we knew where the enemy was, we could predict their
whereabouts and movements, we could distribute the best possible in-
formation to the combat theater to optimize decisions by field com-
manders, information was coordinated in command and coordination (C2)
centers and different models could be constructed to find the best
strategies. Isn't this what we want to do in health? With the new
health IT we can develop broad, accurate Internet based surveillance
systems for monitoring both chronic and infectious diseases. We can
construct an "Internet Civil Defense" for helping to monitor the dis-
ease and conditions for disease. We can establish Command and Control
Centers to monitor diseases, and we can disseminate information to
local health departments through new approaches to education such as
the Supercourse (www.pitt.edu/~super1) so that local people will have
Relevant Information and Intelligence (RII) for decisions. It is time
to establish a new health strategy of Information Dominance over dis-
ease, where we establish the Internet Civil Defense, and empower them
with the best information and knowledge to fight the battles against
disease.
Ronald E. LaPorte, Ph.D.
Director, Disease Monitoring and Telecommunications
WHO Collaborating Center
Professor of Epidemiology
Graduate School of Public Health
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA
Tel: +1-412-383-2746 (Work Phone)
Tel: +1-724-934-9023 (Home Phone)
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