A sample virtual hub and internet website designed to ensure the right to access to HIV/AIDS prevention information for women of African descent around the globe—as public health without borders

The internet provides a revolutionary means of providing global access to training to build capacity in the form of community health workers, master trainers, trainers of trainers, and peer educators. The internet can overcome borders, country resource limitations, and political turmoil/violence as barriers to fostering public health. When there is a new political hot spot that emerges, as has occurred in many parts of Africa and the Caribbean (e.g. Kenya, Haiti in the past), health educators can benefit from tools to train from a distance community health workers and master trainers, as well as trainers of trainers and peer educators. It is especially important to train women to build new in-country/community-level capacity to educate others in their families and communities. This paper describes a new virtual hub and related website(s) created for such local and global capacity building for HIV/AIDS prevention. The virtual hub was created by experts in the design of technologies for learning and teaching, effectively supporting numerous health educators' creation of curriculum tailored for women of African descent living in places such as Harlem, Brooklyn, New York, Haiti, Jamaica, Ghana, and South Africa. Needs assessment and formative evaluation data is used along with survey findings to tailor such content. This paper describes the overall project, the resultant content, and how content can be downloaded into websites for public access—or where there is no computer/internet access, how a portable DVD player loaded with downloadable content can be disseminated to build local indigenous women's capacity for HIV/AIDS prevention.