Migration of an Interactive Global Health Conference to a Virtual Platform: Engaging Learners During the Pandemic

Kubiszewski, Kacper; Gulani, Aaishwariya; Sutter, Kelly; Sarmiento, Bernard; Ghattas, Yasmine S; Mathai, Reanne; Simms-Cendan, Judith S

doi:10.7759/cureus.25601

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 11 publications

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“…A similarly positive evaluation was achieved for the student‐run Interactive Global Health Conference 109 : when comparing the 2020 physical with the 2021 virtual event, the latter attracted more registrants at lower costs to deliver the conference content. Instead of full‐day physical meetings of international health professionals, virtual meeting platforms were successfully exploited combined with online survey tools like Qualtrics 110 .…”

Section: Sustainability In Health and Science Conferencesmentioning

confidence: 71%

AnEAACIreview: Go green in health care and research. Practical suggestions for sustainability in clinical practice, laboratories, and scientific meetings

Pali‐Schöll

Hermuth-Kleinschmidt²,

Dramburg

et al. 2023

Allergy

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Health care professionals (HCPs) and researchers in the health care sector dedicate their professional life to maintaining and optimizing the health of their patients. To achieve this, significant amounts of resources are used and currently it is estimated that the health care sector contributes to more than 4% of net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GHG emissions adversely impact planetary health and consequently human health, as the two are intricately linked. There are many factors of health care that contribute to these emissions. Hospitals and research labs also use high amounts of consumables which require large amounts of raw materials and energy to produce. They are further responsible for polluting the environment via disposal of plastics, drug products, and other chemicals. To maintain and develop state‐of‐the‐art best practices and treatments, medical experts exchange and update their knowledge on methods and technologies in the respective fields at highly specialized scientific meetings. These meetings necessitate thousands of attendants traveling around the globe. Therefore, while the goal of HCPs is to care for the individual, current practices have an enormous (indirect) impact on the health of the patients by their negative environmental impacts. There is an urgent need for HCPs and researchers to mitigate these detrimental effects. The installation of a sustainability‐manager at health care facilities and research organizations to implement sustainable practices while still providing quality health care is desirable. Increased use of telemedicine, virtual/hybrid conferences and green chemistry have recently been observed. The benefits of these practices need to be evaluated and implemented as appropriate. With this manuscript, we aim to increase the awareness about the negative impacts of the health care system (including health care research) on planetary and human health. We suggest some easy and highly impactful steps and encourage health care professionals and research scientists of all hierarchical levels to immediately implement them in their professional as well as private life to counteract the health care sector's detrimental effects on the environment.

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Section: Sustainability In Health and Science Conferencesmentioning

confidence: 71%

AnEAACIreview: Go green in health care and research. Practical suggestions for sustainability in clinical practice, laboratories, and scientific meetings

Pali‐Schöll

Hermuth-Kleinschmidt²,

Dramburg

et al. 2023

Allergy

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Toward VR in VR: Assessing Engagement and Social Interaction in a Virtual Conference

et al. 2023

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The pandemic brought about an unprecedented number of virtual conferences, given the heavy restrictions on travel to in-person meetings. Despite all the advances in technology, people still complain about virtual events. There is Zoom fatigue, confinement malaise, and a longing for personal social interactions. This paper discusses our experience organizing the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference (IEEE VR) as a virtual event. IEEE VR was a success with 1200+ registered paying participants, dozens of workshops and tutorials, and hundreds of technical papers. We used (1) a virtual environment platform, together with (2) discussion tools and (3) videoconferencing/broadcast/online tools to further provide effective social interaction and increase engagement. In this paper, we explore the synergies between virtual environments and other online tools and assess user engagement by analyzing the messages exchanged between participants across different genders and geographical regions. To this end, we apply diverse engagement metrics for online conferences. Our analysis shows that these metrics have the potential to highlight engagement, diversity, and inclusion by combining textual messages, participant geographic and gender information, communities of participants, and visitation patterns in a virtual environment. Drawing on our results and experiences, we propose guidelines for organizing technical virtual events to increase diversity and social interaction.

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Addressing Global Health Competencies Through a Virtual Elective During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Bayardorj,

Huang,

Pai

et al. 2023

JOFPCA

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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Health Department at Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine adapted its curriculum to deliver it virtually for the first time. We enrolled 25 first- and second-year medical students in a Global Health elective of 12 sessions in the Spring of 2021. Students received pre-recorded video lectures and study materials for each session, followed by live interactions with international preceptors. We analyzed the effectiveness of virtual sessions and overall learning outcomes by using 1) a self-proctored multiple-choice quiz administered before and after each session for eight sessions and 2) true-false surveys at the end of each session for ten sessions. Students’ mean score on pre-session quizzes was 56.33% (standard deviation of 1.72%), with individual quiz scores ranging between 42.22% and 79.53%. However, after live interactions via Zoom, students performed significantly better, with a mean score of 89.55% (p <0.001, standard deviation of 1.78%) and individual quiz scores between 69.08% and 100%. When surveyed about their attitudes towards provided topics and study materials and confidence in discussing the topics and their future implications, students’ response was positive, between 95.8% and 99.3%, with an overall survey response rate of 96.7%. We believe that virtual learning provided an effective platform to address global health competencies during the COVID-19 pandemic. It can, therefore, be an effective model for maintaining the engagement of health science students in global health education.

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Migration of an Interactive Global Health Conference to a Virtual Platform: Engaging Learners During the Pandemic

Cited by 3 publications

References 11 publications

AnEAACIreview: Go green in health care and research. Practical suggestions for sustainability in clinical practice, laboratories, and scientific meetings

AnEAACIreview: Go green in health care and research. Practical suggestions for sustainability in clinical practice, laboratories, and scientific meetings

Toward VR in VR: Assessing Engagement and Social Interaction in a Virtual Conference

Addressing Global Health Competencies Through a Virtual Elective During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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