ObjectivesYouTube™ has become a widely used source of health information. This cross‐sectional study aimed to analyze the quality of English language videos on oral leukoplakia available on YouTube™.Materials and methodsA YouTube™ search for oral leukoplakia was performed, leading to 1,690 videos. The first 100 results were examined for exclusion criteria, yielding 28 videos. The source, duration, views, likes, and dislikes of each video were recorded. Two oral medicine residents scored the videos for visibility, popularity, quality, utility, and reliability.ResultsVideos were categorized into two groups: independent users or company advertisements (n = 21) and professional organizations or government agencies (n = 5). Analysis showed that, in general, videos were of low quality, usefulness, and reliability. Higher quality videos had more likes (p < .05, Mann–Whitney test). More reliable videos received more likes and presented a higher viewing rate and interaction index (p < .05, Mann–Whitney test).ConclusionsThere are few high‐quality videos about oral leukoplakia on YouTube™. Oral medicine professionals and students should attempt to correct this deficit, as they are the holders of evidence‐based knowledge and clinical experience.

Introduction: Planetary health (PH) has emerged as a leading field for raising awareness, debating, and finding solutions for the health impacts of human-caused disruptions to Earth's natural systems. PH education addresses essential questions of how humanity inhabits Earth, and how humans affect, and are affected by, natural systems. A pilot massive open online course (MOOC) in PH was created in Brazil in 2020. This MOOC capitalized on the global online pivot, to make the course accessible to a broader audience. This study describes the process of course creation and development and assesses the impact evaluation data and student outcomes of the PH MOOC.Methods: The PH MOOC pilot was launched in Brazilian Portuguese, using the TelessaúdeRS-UFRGS platform on 4/27/2020 and concluded on 7/19/2020 with a total load of 80 h. It was composed of 8 content modules, pre and post-test, 10 topics in a forum discussion, and an optional action plan. This study analyzes the course database, profile of participants, answers to questionnaires, forum interaction, and action plans submitted.Results: Two thousand seven hundred seventy-seven participants enrolled in the course, of which 1,237 (44.54%) gave informed consent for this study. Of the 1,237 participants who agreed to participate in the research, 614 (49.8%) completed the course, and 569 (92.67%) were accredited by TelessaúdeRS-UFRGS. The majority of the participants were concerned with climate change, trained in the health area, and worked in primary health care in places that lacked ongoing sustainability programs. Two hundred forty-one action plans were submitted, major topics identified were food and nutrition, infectious diseases, and garbage and recycling.Discussion: The use of the PH lens and open perspective of the course centered the need to communicate planetary health topics to individuals. The local plans reflected the motto of “think global and act local.” Brazil presents a context of an unprecedented social, political, and environmental crisis, with massive deforestation, extensive fires, and biomass burning altering the biomes, on top of an ongoing necropolitical infodemic and COVID-19 pandemic. In the face of these multiple challenges, this MOOC offers a timely resource for health professionals and communities, encouraging them to address planetary challenges as fundamental health determinants.

Distance learning course improves primary care dentists' diagnosis and self-efficacy in the management of oral lesions Abstract: Oral cancer represents a public health issue because of its high mortality rate, resulting mainly from diagnostic delays.Insufficient training in oral diagnosis is usually perceived by dentists. Distance learning could be used as an auxiliary tool to bridge that gap. This study evaluated the impact of a distance learning course on oral mucosal lesion diagnosis offered to public healthcare dentists. Participants of an online course answered a pretest/posttest comprising clinical images of 30 clinical cases. Participants were questioned about the diagnosis and informed their decision on the cases (referring the cases to a specialist or managing them themselves), as a parameter of perceived self-efficacy. A total of 442 dentists enrolled in the course. Their pass rate was 97%. Classification of the nature of the lesions, diagnostic hypotheses, sensitivity, and specificity improved by 13.4%, 10.0%, 13.4%, and 6.6%, respectively (p<0.01, Wilcoxon test). Regarding management, there was a 16.6% reduction in the intention to refer cases, while confidence in the diagnosis of benign lesions increased by 40%. A distance learning course may be useful in continuing education actions for primary care dentists, improving their diagnostic abilities and encouraging them in the management of oral lesions. Moreover, this strategy could contribute to disseminating knowledge to remote regions, particularly among primary health care professionals.

In Brazil, distance education plays an important role in the training of human resources in the health area. In this context, learning objects, understood as modular digital resources used to support learning, are widely used tools in the process of knowledge construction, although not all are valid resources. To date, the literature does not have a specific instrument in Portuguese to evaluate the quality of learning objects in the health area. In order to fill this gap, this paper describes the search for evidence of validity of internal structure and convergent validity of Equalis-OAS: Scale to evaluate the quality of learning objects in the health area. For the study, Equalis-OAS was applied to professionals and undergraduate students from the different areas of Health Sciences, all participants taking a continuing education health course about Food and Nutrition in Primary Health Care. One thousand and sixty-nine volunteers participated in the study. An Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed that the instrument, which has as its construct “Quality of learning objects for the health area”, covers three dimensions: “Intrinsic Concepts of Learning Objects in the Health Area”, “Educational Characteristics” and “Presentation”. The final instrument consisted of 41 items, which explained 66.8% of the total variance of the scores. The scale had excellent internal consistency indexes (overall scale: α = 0.979; “Intrinsic Concepts of Learning Objects”: α = 0.927; “Educational”: α = 0.947; “Presentation”: α = 0.977). Regarding convergent validation, Pearson’s correlation indicated that Equalis-OAS had a moderate correlation (r=0.59, p<0.01) with LORI version 2.0, translated into Portuguese, an instrument for the evaluation of learning objects in general (i.e., not specific to the health area). These results indicate that Equalis-OAS is an instrument that presents good evidence of validity, indicating its use in the context of health education and research.