Teaching Tools

The KITSO AIDS Training Program is dedicated to working with program faculty in Botswana and around the world to create innovative teaching tools to aid in training Botswana’s health professionals in HIV and AIDS medicine. These teaching tools include a written curriculum currently in development, collected course readings, a pair of interactive CD-ROMs, explanatory slide sets and overheads, illustrative resources, and other appropriate materials.

Lessons from Botswana: A Comprehensive Instructional Guide on HIV and AIDS Medicine for Health Professionals
In time for the XIV International AIDS Conference in July 2002, the KITSO AIDS Training Program has released a second instructional CD-ROM, Lessons from Botswana: A Comprehensive Instructional Guide on HIV and AIDS Medicine for Health Professionals.

Following the successful debut of Course for Physicians: Antiretroviral Therapy, the first interactive CD-ROM offering from KITSO, Lessons from Botswana is an inventive multimedia teaching tool which combines lectures and instructional material from several KITSO trainings and from the Arthur Ashe Program in HIV and AIDS Care’s Practice of AIDS Medicine, an intensive clinical training program offered each year at HAI.

Complete with slides, graphs, charts, and audio, this interactive CD-ROM includes a complete introduction to AIDS clinical care fundamentals, focusing on topics such as Introduction to the Epidemic, HIV and AIDS Care, Antiretroviral Therapy, Pediatric Considerations for AIDS Care and Antiretroviral Therapy, Antiretroviral Therapy Issues and Considerations for Botswana, Adherence and Antiretroviral Therapy, Laboratory Issues related to Antiretroviral Therapy. Health professionals of varying technical backgrounds will find this teaching tool valuable and accessible due to its user-friendly interface and structure.

Lessons from Botswana captures the KITSO faculty’s broad experience and extensive expertise in HIV and AIDS, producing a CD-ROM that enables individuals to receive high-caliber, topical instruction in HIV and AIDS medicine and care. The CD-ROM was jointly developed by faculty from Botswana and the United States and has been designed as an instructional resource to share with colleagues in Botswana and around the world. KITSO faculty members featured on Lessons from Botswana, include representatives of the AIDS Action Committee of Boston, Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Boston, Botswana–HAI Partnership for HIV Research and Education, Children’s Hospital of Boston, Dimock Community Health Center of Boston, Gaborone Private Hospital, HAI, Harvard School of Public Health, Ministry of Health of Botswana, National AIDS Coordinating Agency of Botswana, New England AIDS Education and Training Center, Nyangabwe Hospital, Partners AIDS Research Center at Harvard Medical School, Princess Marina Hospital, and the University of Botswana.

Course for Physicians: Antiretroviral Therapy
In July 2001, KITSO offered its first training course for Physicians on Antiretroviral Therapy through its AIDS Care Clinical Fundamentals Training Module. A CD-ROM of the course proceedings, Course for Physicians: Antiretroviral Therapy, was released and distributed in early 2002. This CD-ROM incorporates the lectures delivered during the July 2001 training and all the accompanying slides, charts, pictures, and graphs.

AIDS Care Clinical Fundamentals Module Video Series
A multi-volume video series is being produced by KITSO based upon the program’s successful AIDS Care Clinical Fundamentals Module, which includes an extensive section on antiretroviral therapy. This module—which has been offered several times during 2001 and 2002 as a training course in Botswana—is appropriate for nurses, pharmacy technicians, and other health professionals. Relevant course readings will be distributed along with the KITSO video series and health leaders will be encouraged to use the materials and video series for in-service trainings.

For more information about these resources, email kitso@hsph.harvard.edu.