Health content

  This page is part of the OLPC Health Project. Hardware | Software | Content | Health Jam

Health Sciences Online

The health coordination team at Health Sciences Online have put together for OLPC five spreadsheets with hundreds of links to child-suitable sites with health education content categorized by topic, provider, description, and intended audience.

Goal

First, a note about Health information learning as opposed to other types of learning Learning Health.

Our goal with health materials is a comprehensive database of health information. We've done some work on its structure and ways of accessing such a resource, but it is a long way away. We are also focusing on specific sources of information and materials for eventual inclusion into a Health Database.

Flyer info / Criteria

One Laptop per Child is now accepting open-source educational materials pertaining to health and appropriate for children ages 6 through 12. Your materials shipped on OLPC laptops to educate children worldwide!

Materials should:

• be free and open-source for worldwide distribution
• have an emphasis on audiovisual presentation for a young audience
• if possible, be interactive and encourage creativity and hands-on learning
• if possible, be available in multiple languages (translators are available through OLPC)
• classroom activities and curriculum materials are welcome
• materials that utilize the laptops features (built-in microphone, camera, oscilloscope) are welcome

Relevant topics include:

• Physiology and body systems/functions
• Water and sanitation (e.g., water testing and filtration, village-scale water treatment, latrines)
• Hygiene
• Nutrition
• Infectious diseases
• Indoor cooking and air quality
• First aid and "field" medicine
• Disaster Relief

Further examples of relevant health topics can be found in Where There Is No Doctor and other texts from the Hesperian Foundation:

An example of child-appropriate materials in the OLPC library can be found here: E.O. Wilson Foundation's "Biomes of the Earth," (see also Biology (collection)) a pictoral presentation library of the Earth's ecosystems.

For questions and to submit materials to the library, please contact: content at laptop dot org

Get Involved

If you would like to help contribute there is lots of editing, illustrating, writing, and many other tasks that need to be done. The best way to start contributing is to join the mailing list. Please join and introduce yourself. We'll be glad to help you find a home with a project.

You can also put your name on the /People list (not an ideal solution, but fine for now).

Active Projects

These projects are under active development and need additional volunteers.

Adapt Hesperian Books

• Contact: Pascal Scheffers
• The Hesperian Foundation[1] has been gracious enough to supply us with the source materials for their popular publications and PDF's. We are in the process of adapting the books by the Hesperian Foundation into a format for the XO, and eventual inclusion into the Health Database

Polish and Improve Human Physiology wikibook

• The wikibook project Human Physiology[2] is a good Health resource if not immediately applicable. It is instead a general reference introduction to Human Anatomy, which is also very important! Work is underway to cleanup, format and record an audio version of the Human Physiology text.

Collect Health Images

• Contact: Seth Woodworth
• We are compiling images (photos and illustrations) to aid diagnosis and to assist training of health concepts and techniques. See Health Images for how you can get involved with this project.

Animals and Health

• Contact: Chris Leonard
• In many target communities, children will be involved in taking care of domesticated animals. Improvements in the health of livestock can lead directly to improvements in nutritional and economic status as well as water/sanitation and environmental conditions. All of these can have a critical impact on learning. See Animal health if you are interested in contributing to this project.

Health Books for Children

• Contact: Mel Chua (Soon to be Lynne May Kim)
• Adapting Child-to-child's storybooks that teach health topics for the XO.
  • UNESCO originals here with copyright-free notice, C-to-C is repost.

Public Health

• Contact: Chris Watkins
• Collating knowledge related to public health on Appropedia
  • Appropriate technologies for sanitation, clean water, hand-wash stations...
  • Best practices in development projects

Proposed Projects

Give feedback on these projects on their discussion pages.

Anatomy, Body Systems and Nutrition

• An age appropriate, cohesive and comprehensive way to explore anatomy, body systems, and Nutrition

UN-developed health education resources

• Improved Learning through better Health, Nutrition and Education for the School-Aged Child http://www.schoolsandhealth.org/
  • Reach out to Partnership for Child Development. Contact info here

• Global School Health Policy Checklist: an inventory of the policy priorities for school health in different countries worldwide

Community Toolbox

http://ctb.ku.edu/en/Default.htm

is really worth looking into.

Topics to Address

People are needed to develop and implement content addressing these topics.

• Water and sanitation

• HIV/AIDS

• Safe use of the XO and peripherals

• Infectious diseases
  • Consider adapting Microbes in Sickness and in Health (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH) NIH Publication No. 06-4914, January 2006. As a USGovt publication, it is public domain.
  • Pandemic flu preparedness see http://www.unicef.org/avianflu/index.html

Useful links & repositories

Health Sciences Online

• The health coordination team at Health Sciences Online have put together for OLPC five spreadsheets with hundreds of links to child-suitable sites with health education content categorized by topic, provider, description, and intended audience.

The Medpedia Project

• A wiki for medical information sponsored by Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, UC Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School, and other leading global health organizations.

Health Roads Media

• Interesting public health messaging translation group

Virtual Health Library

• many interesting links