The African Health OER Network

Mission: The African Health Open Educational Resources (OER) Network (est. 2008) aims to advance health education in Africa by creating and promoting free, openly licensed teaching materials created by Africans to share knowledge, address curriculum gaps, and support health education communities.

Challenges to Health in Africa

• Low government budget for health • Low healthworker to population ratio • High disease burden • Scarce, aging, and emigrating lecturers for basic sciences • Not enough instructors or classroom spaces • Repetitive instructional responsibilities • Large lectures and crowded clinical situations • Lack of affordable, contextually appropriate instructional materials

Approach

Local Materials + Open Licenses = Greater Access, Visibility, and Use of Knowledge Worldwide

Community

• 160 people trained in open licenses • 115 authors • 12 institutions

Collection

• 135 modules • 339 materials • 144 videos (906 minutes) • Accessed in 190+ countries

Results: Examples of Use and Adaptation Ghana:

University of Ghana students used an obstetrics module from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

South Africa:

University of Cape Town created an occupational health module that has been used on three continents (Africa, Europe, and South America) and has been translated into Spanish

Ethiopia:

The Ministry of Health distributed a Caesarean section learning module by University of Ghana

Nigeria:

Medical residents used gynecology surgery videos from University of Ghana

Botswana:

University of Botswana created a collection of pre clinical supplemental resources using materials from University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University, Tufts University, and others

Usage

• 8500 views/mo on website • 861K views on YouTube • 795 favorites on YouTube • 173 comments on YouTube Visualization of greatest word frequency in YouTube comments from wordle.com, openmi.ch/a2datadive_ahon

Funded by:

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation | The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation | University of Michigan Medical School

www.oerafrica.org/healthoer | openmi.ch/healthoernetwork

Copyright 2012 The Regents of the University of Michigan. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. .