HEAT: Health Education and TrainingCollaborative Module Development

http://www.open.ac.uk/africa/HEAT/

Dr Basiro Davey, Department of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences, The Open University

‘The single most common request in Africa is for

assistance with educating and training staff of all

kinds: community health workers, clinical officers,

doctors, nurses, managers and technicians;

meeting the needs of rural people is a key focus.’Crisp Report, 2007

HEAT is upgrading Ethiopia’s rural health workers using ‘blended learning’

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Ethiopia has deployed over 33,000 rural health workers: 2 in every village

The blended learning model

13 Distance Learning Modules Practical Training Programme

10-15 Students

Distance Learning Tutor

Practical Skills Mentors

self-directed

study with tutor

support

face-to-face skills sessions

Developing the HEAT Modules• 13 Modules commissioned and approved by the

Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health• Authors are Ethiopian health experts

We have already trained 57 authors in Ethiopia

Intensive Curriculum Design and Writing Workshops in Ethiopia

Authors work collaboratively with OU experts in full-time workshops for a total of 6 to 8 weeks

Ideal ratio is one OU expert to two local authors

Advantages of the blended learning approach

Theory modules enable students to update, upgrade and learn new areas of curriculum ...

while remaining in their communities, delivering health services locally

Other advantages ...

• Access to education and training for students who cannot leave their jobs and families to study conventionally

• Rapid scale-up of student numbers (1,092 already studying the Modules in Ethiopia)

• Lower cost than providing traditional ‘classroom’ teaching

• Quality national curriculum delivered transparently to an agreed standard in all locations

• Modules can be quickly adapted for training other health professionals

• Capacity building in distance learning (trained authors, tutors, implementation teams)

13 Modules (total 225 Study Sessions)

Every study session has the same structure:

• Introduction (begins the ‘learning pathway’)

• Learning Outcomes

• Teaching text, with diagrams, photos, tables, margin notes, boxes, In-Text Questions (ITQs)

• Most sessions also have ‘real life’ case studies

• Summary of main points

• Self-Assessment Questions (SAQs) testing the Learning Outcomes

Worldwide access to HEAT ModulesWork is underway to create:

• An online knowledge bank of highly structured, distance learning texts and multi-media, covering core areas of healthcare

• All HEAT materials are open educational learning resources – free for anyone in the world to download and adapt for their own programmes

• Deliverable either in print, online or on disks.

Theory Curriculum: Overview

The first four Modules

1,092 Ethiopian students have begun studying these now

Antenatal CareLabour and

Delivery Care Postnatal Care

Integrated Management of Newborn and Childhood Illness

(IMNCI)

The next four modules ...

Health Education, Advocacy and Community Mobilisation

Communicable Diseases

Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and

Malaria

TB and Leprosy

HIV/AIDs and STIs

Other Diseases

and Epidemics

Hygiene and Environmental Health

Personal Hygiene

Food safety

Sanitation and Waste Disposal

Water Safety

Immunization

The last five Modules ...

Nutrition Family Planning

Adolescent and Youth Reproductive

Health

Non-Communicable Diseases, Emergency Care

and Mental Health

Health Management,

Ethics and Research

Challenges of the HEAT approach

• Some local authors struggled to write effective distance learning material despite our support

• OU team underestimated the editing we needed to contribute to the Modules after the authors handed over their texts

• Communication difficult between visits – weak internet access and bandwidth, unreliable postal service, mobile phonecalls expensive

Next steps• Complete the online resource bank of the first

13 HEAT Modules as open educational resources

• Monitoring and evaluation of first students in Ethiopia

With additional funding we aim to:

• Assist new partners wanting to adapt existing HEAT Modules for training in their countries

• Support development of new Modules in new topic areas (e.g. eye health, palliative care)

• Seek funding to translate Modules into other languages

HEAT: The big vision• To create a consortium of countries and organisations working

together to address the health education and training needs of their populations.

• To improve access and raise the quality of all aspects of health worker education and training in a way that is adaptable, highly cost-effective and sustainable.

• To protect lives – particularly young lives – and reduce maternal mortality.

Thank you!