Towards mitigating radiological health disparities using virtual strategies in global medical physics education: A RAD-AID International example
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63187/ampas.13Keywords:
Global Health, Medical Physics Education, RAD-AIDAbstract
The global distribution of radiological health services is extremely heterogeneous. In the past few years, it has been shown that approximately 90% of the population in the low-income world lacks access to radiotherapy and between one-half and two-thirds of the world’s population lacks availability of diagnostic imaging. One of the primary drivers of this global heterogeneity is a critical shortage in the global radiological health workforce, of which medical physicists are an essential component. The pandemic illustrated the effectiveness of virtual learning which has subsequently been used to supplement education in various global health settings. Building off experiences in other fields, medical physics volunteers from the international nonprofit organization, RAD-AID International, have implemented four didactic virtual global medical physics educational initiatives: (1) a medical physics lecture series open to physicists all over the world, (2) a medical physics course for radiation oncology residents at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, (3) a medical physics course for radiology residents at Georgetown Public Hospital in Guyana, and (4) practical radiation treatment planning workshops open to physicists and dosimetrists all over the world. These initiatives illustrate four distinct methods through which medical physicists in high-income countries can supplement the education of medical physicists, students, and physicians in lower resource regions of the world. This work serves as a roadmap for other organizations or motivated individuals looking to become engaged in global medical physics outreach. It also demonstrates the variety of educational activities that constitute global medical physics education.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Joseph Weygand, Jesutofunmi Fajemisin, Patricia Svolos, Daniela Branco, Timothy D. Keiper, Eman Suliman, John M. Bryant, Ashley E. Rubinstein, Samuel A. Einstein, Alichia White, Daniel J. Mollura
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
