Strategic Plan WHO-NCD-Supercourse Ala Al’wan, M.D. Assistant Director-General for Non-communicable Diseases Mental Health, and Injuries, WHO Ronald LaPorte,

Strategic PlanWHO-NCD-Supercourse

Ala Al’wan, M.D. Assistant Director-General for Non-communicable Diseases Mental Health, and Injuries, WHO Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D. Director WHO CC, Professor of Epidemiology, Uni. Pittsburgh

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Nelson Mandela

Cambridge, 1999 WHO Diabetes Epidemiology Training Course

Importance of Cambridge Diabetes Courses

• 22 Courses since 1981•Diabetes epidemiologist from 7 (1981) to >800 (2005)• Over half of Diabetes Epidemiology articles now by scientists at Cambridge courses• 19 developing country students published 343 articles• World leaders in diabetes trained in these courses (Al’wan, Ramachadran, Mohan, Roglich, de Serenday, Ze) •Global Network of Diabetes Epidemiologists

WHO-NCD-Supercourse

SupercourseFaculty in all countriesworking together toimprove global healththrough better prevention education

Supercourse

• Originally funded by NASA, National Library of Medicine and the Library of Alexandria• A Global Network of 55,000 Faculty in 172 countries• Mission, to improve health with Prevention Education• Like the Library of Alexandria, but instead of saving and sharing books we save and share PowerPoint slides and lectures• 3455 lectures, ~1500 about non-communicable diseases• In 12 months the lectures taught ~1,000,000 students• Top web site, Science, and top 100 PC magazine• 150 publications in Nature, Science, Lancet, BMJ• 20 Nobel Prize winners

Why Build a WHO-NCD-Supercourse?

• Growing importance of NCDs• Proof of Concept, Cambridge• Proof of Concept, Supercourse• Many Common risk factors• All countries are impacted by NCDs• Need for cross-fertilization of young scientists• Training to combat different NCDs is similar

Building the Global WHO-NCD-Supercourse Human Network

WHO-NCD Supercourse Training

•14 day training course

•Didactic course work in morning using Supercourse lectures

•Small interdisciplinary work groups in afternoon to develop international NCD project

WHO-NCD-Supercourse Certificate this certifies that

Ali Ardalan, M.D.

is awarded this certificate forCompletion of a WHO-NCD-Supercourse

program in Tehren

Ala Al’wan, M.D.

Ronald LaPorte, Ph.D.

27 October 2008

Global Scientific Advisory Board

Recruitment

•WHO NCD Collaborating Centres

•Supercourse networking

•WHO Network

•Schools of Public Health

•Previous students at short courses

Criteria for Selection

• Under age 35

• Working in the area of Diabetes, CHD or Cancer

• Located in a good research environment

• Excellent recommendations

• Agree to teach a course in NCD prevention in the next 12 months

• Preference for developing countries

• Able to pay for transportation

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. (Chinese Proverb)

Teach the Teacher

Evaluation

Conclusions

•NCDs are a major global problem

•NCDs can be prevented

•We need a large global network of people trained in NCD prevention

•A trained global network can be inexpensively achieved by building a WHO-NCD-Supercourse training program