AFRO-NETS> Supercourse Newsletter, September 6, 2001

[Ron Laporte <super3+@pitt.edu>]

Supercourse Newsletter, September 6, 2001
-----------------------------------------

Supercourse: http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/

Dear Friends,

School Days, School Days: 
In the US the school term has begun. We in the Supercourse would like 
to do telediagnosis on you. When you start to teach, do you students 
yawn? When you start to teach, do you think that you have Narcolepsy? 
Does your one-hour lecture, feel like 4 hours. If you answered yes to 
any of these questions you may have the condition called Lecture 
halitosis. The cure is simple, use one Supercourse lecture and call 
us in the morning. This immediately clears up lecture halitosis, your 
students will not be infected with this terrible condition, they will 
love you, and you will get promoted. You can take preventive action 
to this condition with the Supercourse!!! 

CD Distribution: 
We have been astonished with the speed of distribution of the CDs. 
Many of you helped by copying the CDs for your students and col-
leagues, and they have joined the effort. The lectures that you have 
produced are going to become a global standard for research and 
training in our field. It is amazing how the development of the open 
system as established in the software industry works very well in the 
lectureware industry. Please feel free to continue to distribute the 
CDs, again with the condition that they not be sold, and they are to 
be distributed as widely as possible.

Egypt: 
Dr. Aleem from New York is a reproductive endocrinologist. She is 
from Egypt, and a member of the Arab-American Medical Association. 
She has been fantastic to the Supercourse. Shortly after hearing 
about the Supercourse she got in contact with the Minister of Health 
of Egypt who was also very interested. We express mailed to him in-
formation about the Supercourse. He probably will be meeting with us 
in Cairo at the end of October. Also there is the possibility that we 
will meet Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of the President and a leader in 
health, especially for children in Egypt. The MOH indicated that 
Egypt has a satellite that transmits its signal to over 50 Arab coun-
tries. It is exciting that your lectures will educate the educators, 
in many countries in the next year.

Lectures: 
We are very pleased once again as to the speed to which lectures have 
come into our center. We now have 457 lectures, with 25 coming in 
during August alone. We are targeting Halloween (Oct. 31) to be a 
treat day (not a trick or treat). On that day we want to roll out 500 
lectures. If this is accomplished we invite all of you to come to our 
local India Restaurant to celebrate, and Akira and Ron will dress as 
witches!! We want to have 500 lectures so that in November we can 
sent to you a new, updated, and exciting CD of 500 lectures by you, 
our global experts, and friends.

Where are we from: 
Mita just analyzed the data of who we are, and it is most fascinat-
ing. After eliminating the duplicates, and cleaning the data base, 
the results are astonishing. Overall we are a faculty coming from 141 
countries, this is up from 110 countries in June. Isn't that amazing? 
We are likely the largest, and most globally diverse academic faculty 
in International Health. Not unexpectedly most people are from North 
American and Europe, however, there is a very large number from Latin 
America with Cuba leading the way. African demonstrates very good 
representation as well. We even have scientists from Nepal. It is 
quite a group.

Congratulations: 
A long term faculty member, K.C. Lun just became president of the In-
ternational Medical Informatics Association. We are talking with him 
to bring a prevention arm to the organization.

Development of Local Supercourses: 
 From Chuck Vukotich <CVukotich@achd.net>
The supercourse has been adopted as part of the curriculum of the 
Northeast Regional Public Health Leadership Institute (NEPHLI) in the 
US. The Institute brings together state and local health departments, 
academia, public health associations and organizations committed to 
improving the skills of leaders in the field of public health in the 
US. Collectively, this partnership strengthens leadership skills and 
promotes healthier communities. 

NEPHLI is a year-long experiential program that builds and improves 
the leadership skills of current and future public health practitio-
ners. Curricula are tailored to meet the needs of Scholars and ad-
dress issues important to their personal growth and to building 
healthier communities. In the curriculum, scholars get an explanation 
of the Supercourse and the URL. Eleven lectures have been contributed 
to The Supercourse through a project by NEPHLI scholars. 

The September, 2001, NEPHLI NEWSLETTER will have an article on The 
Supercourse, that contains the URL plus a solicitation for all schol-
ars to request a CD. CD's will be provided courtesy of the Allegheny 
county Health Department, and Chuck Vukotich, NEPHLI Scholar, 2000.

It is wonderful to see the Supercourse being accepted at the local 
health department level. Please contact Chuck to see how you might be 
able to establish the Supercourse locally as he is doing.

Please consider join PEALHs (Prevention Educators against Lecture 
Halitosis). It is a readily preventable disease. With a few short 
messages, your friends can also join PEALHs, and we can stamp out 
this ugly disease that we are all inflicted with at some points in 
our teaching.

Ron, Akira, Eun Ryoung, Eugene, Faina, Mita, Fan, Grace, Abed, Deb, 
Tom, Yuefang
mailto:super3+@pitt.edu

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