Training & Tutorials

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Developing a Culture of Research and Community Involvement: African Medical Students

A large part of NLM's focus in Africa is on working with students (they are the future!), so training, mentoring, and encouraging their work and ideas is very important.

This effort began as an "information intervention" in Mifumi village in Eastern Uganda. The village and its Health Center became part of the Community Based Education and Service Program (COBES) of the medical school at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

NLM worked with the students and the nurse sister at the health center to carry out a baseline survey on knowledge about malaria; implement the MedlinePlus malaria tutorial in several media and local languages; and, in collaboration with Ugandan health informatics experts, conduct a study in actual use of bednets, employing a digital pen application for collecting data.

This last project concluded with a community meeting in which the students presented their research findings back to the village. Over 150 people came and stayed for two hours.

This work in Mifumi village has inspired expansion into other tutorials designed to help both health professionals and communities deal with local health problems, including mental health in war-torn Northern Uganda, tuberculosis, diarrhea, and Burkitt's Lymphoma, the latter in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute.

Tutorials & Training Materials