Learning without borders: Providing online field epidemiology training in Spanish

Since 2003, the North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness (NCCPHP) has issued the bi-monthly online periodical FOCUS on Field Epidemiology, which provides a hands-on practical approach to various field epidemiology topics. This periodical has been well received and has garnered praise as a useful training tool for public health professionals. The lack of such a training tool for Spanish-speaking public health professionals is well known. To meet that training need, NCCPHP began translating FOCUS into Spanish for electronic distribution to Spanish-speaking public health professionals starting in 2004. FOCUS en Español is currently distributed via a listserv to more than 300 persons in the US and a variety of Spanish-speaking countries. NCCPHP recently conducted a survey of FOCUS en Español readers to learn how the publication is being used and by whom, the extent of further distribution, and how beneficial the trainings are to Spanish-speaking public health professionals. This presentation discusses results of the survey that specifically demonstrate how FOCUS en Español is being used to meet individual and organizational training needs by a diverse group of Spanish-speaking public health professionals. It also describes lessons learned in the process of adapting a successful English language training tool into Spanish and building an audience for this tool.