ON THE WAY TO RAISE AN INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION UNIVERSITY NETWORK: THE CASE OF “NAME FOR HEALTH”

The emergence of networks linking Medical Higher Education Institutions (HEI) creates new opportunities to share scientific and educational resources. In the context of Cooperation for Health Development, the increasing systematization of these networks is a tool to improve the quality of healthcare provided to populations in priority areas (maternal and child healthcare and infectious diseases) related with the Millennium Development Goals.
The “A NAME for Health” project, established since December 2008 among 4 HEIs in Portugal, Angola and Mozambique, is funded by the EDULINK program and constitutes “A Network Approach in Medical Education (NAME) for the Pursuit of Quality in HEIs and Health Systems”.

NAME aims to improve Health Care in Angola and Mozambique through the development of joint actions in Medical Education and Clinical Practice. More specifically, it aims to reinforce the capacity of partner HEIs to improve academic skills and clinical expertise at priority areas.

In order to achieve the sustainability of this network a strategic approach, centered by a technological platform, is being developed in order to progressively involve all partners and the commitment of the HEIs. The e-learning platform has, at its core, the production and dissemination of medical education contents produced by NAME partners, and is a transversal tool directed to deal with problems related to Medical Education. This is achieved by different approaches: (i) videoconference sessions on clinical subjects, planned to allow sharing in medical and pedagogical knowledge among Portuguese language health professionals; (ii) an online health library, including publications in Portuguese language, selected according to the priority areas of this project and the bibliographic references of the Medical Course in the partner HEIs, aims to fill the insufficient bibliography reported by the academic staff and students of African HEIs; (iii) publication of the 1st Journal of Medical Education of Portuguese Language that will include, in its first edition, the contributions of the speakers of the 1st Conference in Medical Education of the Medical Community of Portuguese Language, organized by NAME in Maputo, on March 25th, constitutes a strong commitment of all the partners in collaborative content production in Medical Education (iv) NAME website and (v) a biannual newsletter to disseminate the project’s progress and results to the general public and to the partners.

Approaching all the HEIs partners’ representatives is demonstrated to be a critical factor to reinforce the platform role in the sustainability of this network in Portuguese language. In this context, an event was organized during the Portuguese “Development Days” to discuss the use of Information and Communication Technologies for quality improvement in Higher Education and Cooperation and Development Projects, and to analyze the contributions of a Portuguese language medical education platform for the educational needs in Angola and Mozambique.
(A NAME for Health is supported by EDULINK Program, Contract nr. 9 ACP RPR 118 # 29)