Health Partnership for Knowledge Sharing and Learning in the Americas

This initiative relies on partnership to respond to a wide range of capacity-building needs. At the programme's centre are PAHO's Virtual Campus of Public Health and the World Bank's Global Development Learning Network (GDLN); in addition, the Consortium for Workers' Education (CWE) provides professional-level content, Medical Missions for Children (MMC) provides access to telemedicine for patient diagnoses, and the Inter-American Distance Education Consortium (CREAD) provides methodological design input.

These partners are working together to promote communication between public health leaders and professionals, and to develop skills and competencies. The Partnership will use a combination of learning methodologies and ICTs that are designed to allow programmes to reach a range of stakeholders and health professionals (including practitioners, local and national policy and decision makers, representatives, and hospital personnel). Programme content is designed to help these personnel conduct discussions on policy and national strategies, develop health-related programme plans, and implement those programmes.

Both face-to-face and "virtual" learning exchanges constitute the project strategy. Activities are conducted in the form of videoconference-based dialogues, on-site seminars, online courses and workshops, and broadcasts aiming to reach those working at the grassroots level. As of this writing, there have been 3 on-site Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) MDG policy dialogues: a health promotion and cancer prevention seminar in Bogota, a conference on reducing child mortality in Washington DC, and a session on pediatric diabetes in New York. An online course ("Specialization Diploma in Technological Health Resources Management - GeTS") was developed by the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru and launched in Lima in September 2003. Various in-person and online opportunities for knowledge and experience exchange are forthcoming; they focus on topics such as improving health services for indigenous people, securing sustainable health care financing, integral care of adolescent health, and hospital management.

Health.

According to organisers, health systems in the Americas have recently undergone transformations in the ways they conduct, regulate, finance, organise, and provide services. As these structural changes are being implemented, they say, the emerging challenge is to ensure the reduction of health inequities, the improvement of people's health and quality of life, and the achievement of the MDGs.