Public Health Grand Rounds (PHGR): Empowering the Community Through Distance Education (DE)

Background: Wayne State University School of Medicine (WSUSOM) and the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion (DHWP) leadership have developed new and innovative approaches to information sharing with staff, clients, partners, and the community through Distance Education (DE). These collaborations include the DHWP PHGR Series. WSUSOM is the largest single campus medical school in the country. Traditional education and teaching models in academic settings often proves costly, time consuming and inefficient for information sharing. More cost-effective models are needed. DHWP is the eleventh largest health department in the United States and services over 990,000 Detroit residents. DE is an effective and increasingly popular tool for training, teaching, and educating the public health community and the consumers.

Design: PHGR series incorporates the designated monthly National Health Initiative (NHI), Healthy People 2010 (HP), and local health concerns. PHGR informs, educates, and shares information on NHI's, HP, and DHWP services. The target audiences are DHWP staff, health providers, and community. PHGR series is recorded live, rebroadcast throughout the year on cable television, and Internet video streamed on WSUSOM and the City of Detroit websites.

Results: The strategy is to roll out the NHI monthly challenge, sustain the dialogue over the year, to empower consumers and providers to enforce the NHI. The DHWP staff, local, and national experts present the NHI.

Conclusion: DHWP PHGR is the only PHGR program in the United States that offers live seminars, cable television rebroadcasts, video streaming and the opportunity to receive “Educational Credits” from viewing. DE has proven to be an important means for leadership to share information with staff, consumers and providers.