Online Community Addresses Surgical Disease in Resource-Limited Settings
To help care providers and public health professionals around the world share information immediately, the Global Health Delivery Project has launched the online Global Surgery and Anesthesia Community.
“Our goal is to help surgical providers collaborate and communicate about different challenges and problems they are facing in different parts of the world about delivering surgical services,” said Robert Riviello, MD, MPH, a trauma and acute care general surgeon at BWH, and one of three surgeons who is serving as a moderator for the site.
Although publishing data is an important means of sharing information like this, Riviello noted that the online community facilitates real-time discussions and answers to questions. “People can share their thoughts, data, what worked in a certain situation or what didn’t work, and challenges they faced, whether they published findings or not,” Riviello said.
Nadine Semer, MD, MPH, FACS, a general and plastic surgeon who volunteers in rural areas of the developing world, also is serving as a moderator for the site. “The multidisciplinary discussions in GHDonline communities really open up the potential for collaboration, offering fresh perspectives on recurring problems and fostering the development of new innovative solutions,” she said.
The Global Health Delivery Project, which launched the community this spring, was created by the BWH Division of Global Health Equity, the Harvard Medical School Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health, the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School and Partners In Health.
The community began this spring and is generating discussion on several topics.
Visit the online community at www.ghdonline.org/surgery