Special Report: Combat diabetes and obesity with MOOCs
The number of European citizens suffering from type 2 diabetes and morbid obesity has exploded and the need for new and better treatment strategies has never been greater. We propose that a new educational initiative: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) should be employed to combat diabetes and obesity.
Healthcare professionals and patients
Increased morbidity and mortality are closely linked to diabetes and obesity. This can be exemplified by a twofold increase in risk of dying from cardiovascular disease in overweight people and people with diabetes.
Our goal is to improve treatment of diabetes and obesity on a global scale by free online education to healthcare professionals and patients struggling with these diseases as well.
MOOCs are powerful resources for providing information about state-of-the-art evidence-based therapies to medical doctors, nurses and medical students around the globe. At the University of Copenhagen we have some of the world’s leading diabetes researchers, and we have an obligation to share cutting-edge basic and translational science related to the field, but also to share information of the newest treatment strategies for diabetes and obesity with colleagues, students and patients around the globe. Such an online global initiative has already been started; we call it “Diabetes – a Global Challenge”.
Medical and Life Science students
Diabetes – a Global Challenge has already attracted massive attention from a very diverse audience: we have had more than 60,000 participants from 150 different countries, including but not limited to healthcare professionals. Interestingly, both medical/life-science university students and patients with diabetes participated in large numbers, which indicate that online evidence-based education is suitable not only for health care professionals but for students and patients as well. In a recent investigator-initiated survey we assessed the impact of participation in our diabetes course with regards to the participant’s professional life. 90% of the participants working as healthcare professionals confirmed that our diabetes course had great impact on their professional life and their knowledge about diabetes.
Following these encouraging figures, we assessed the impact of our course on medical students taking classes in endocrinology (Diabetologia) at the University of Copenhagen. Indeed, our online course in diabetes was evaluated very positively by the medical students who gave average ratings of 4.5 (out of 5) with respect to the course’s relevance to the students’ future professional life and their upcoming exams.
In 2016 we will continue to improve our course, Diabetes – a Global Challenge, to align with the additional requests from our course participants. We are therefore preparing new course elements including ‘prevention of diabetes and obesity’ and ‘treatment of complications’ related to these diseases. We are encouraged by the multiple positive responses from our course participants and suggest that other institutions encourage similar initiatives to ensure global, as well as local, cutting-edge education in diabetes and obesity.
We believe that adding online education to the current treatment strategies will help our battle against diabetes and diabetes-related complications. Our course, Diabetes – a Global Challenge, may be neither the first nor the last MOOC, but we hope that by reading this report your interest in global education in diabetes and obesity has been aroused.
Signe Torekov Sørensen, PhD
Associate Professor
+45 22 98 38 27
[email protected]
Nicolai J Wewer Albrechtsen,
MD, GCSRT (HMS)
+45 35 33 04 85
[email protected]
Jens Juul Holst,
Scientific Director
Professor, DMSci
[email protected]
Instructors of ‘Diabetes – a global challenge’
https://www.coursera.org/learn/diabetes