Washington D.C., 17 October 2022 (PAHO) — The Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH) of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) surpassed the 2-million-user mark at the end of September. The Virtual Campus offers more than 300 courses on various health topics to users from 225 countries and territories around the world, most of them health workers and students of health sciences.
The PAHO Virtual Campus for Public Health is a network of people, institutions, and organizations that have been sharing courses, resources, services, and activities in the areas of education, information, and knowledge management since 2008.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when travel was restricted, PAHO's technical cooperation was supported by remote activities. "The Virtual Campus has been instrumental in providing technical guidance on COVID-19," said PAHO Director Carissa F. Etienne during PAHO's 30th Pan American Sanitary Conference last month. "We can leverage its tools to continue reaching the millions of health workers in this Region who need to strengthen or expand their knowledge," she said.
All VCPH courses are open-access and free of charge, reflecting the Organization's areas of technical cooperation. Courses are offered in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, the four official languages of PAHO.
The virtual training space also offers tutored courses with established start and end dates, coordinated by teaching teams. Eligible individuals can apply.
With 270,000 people enrolled, the course on correctly completing death certificates set a record for the highest number of students, followed by courses on implementation of the HEARTS technical package, the fundamentals of palliative care, occupational health and safety, management of hypertension and cardiovascular risk, prevention of self-harm and suicide, and diagnosis and clinical management of dengue.
VCPH automatically issues certificates to those who complete the evaluations for each course. VCPH participants can also freely access the learning materials for completed courses, including guides, presentations, videos, and bibliographies.
