[Sigiii-l] Question about Projects related to Health Care for Non Literate Populations

[Padmini Srinivasan]

Dear Colleagues,

The topics of the recent list of panel proposals prompts me to make my
request.  My apologies in advance if this is not relevant to individual
interests. 

In collaboration with the Gandhigram Rural University, Dindigul and the
Meenakshi Mission Hospital in Madurai, both in Tamil Nadu, India I am trying
to develop a project that involves digital libraries and health literacy -
specifically targeting non literate populations.  I am motivated by current
observations as for example by the 2006 World Health Report that at least
1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to the most basic healthcare.
Overall there is an estimated need for about 4 million health care workers.
A part-solution that I want to explore is to make visual materials on
disease (especially prevention and diagnosis) available to endangered
communities.  There is the parallel issue of delivery of these materials and
for this I am working with the Computer Society of India, Library
Associations, colleges, and schools in Tamil Nadu.

Given the above background, I would very much appreciate hearing especially
about projects, and any other pointers related to this goal.

I am interested not only in Tamil Nadu - it is more of a convenience sample
- as I visit that area regularly.  My interest is in extensible, flexible
visual materials that would work at least 60% of the way in other
communities. Thus I would also appreciate pointers in the context of other
developing nations.  My focus is on basic health information with minimal
requirements in terms of linguistic literacy.

Of course, if anyone would like to collaborate with me on working through
some of these issues that would be wonderful.

I would be happy to take responses offline and summarize them for the list.

With best wishes and thanks for your time.

Padmini

Padmini Srinivasan, Professor
School of Library and Information Science
Management Sciences
Computer Science (courtesy appointment)
The University of Iowa
http://mingo.info-science.uiowa.edu/padmini
319-335-5708
padmini-srinivasan at uiowa.edu

On 2/7/07 11:42 AM, "caj3 at uwm.edu" <caj3 at uwm.edu> wrote:

> 
> Ajit Pyati has also submitted two proposals:
> 
> CT-Mediated Diaspora Studies: New Directions in Immigrant Information
> Behavior Research (co-sponsored by SIG-USE)
> 
> Participants:
> 
> Clara Chu, UCLA
> Karen Fisher, U Washington
> Ajit Pyati, UCLA
> Ramesh Srinivasan, UCLA
> Nadia Caidi, U Toronto
> 
> Crossing the digital divide with Charity, Public Goods or Business Models?
> 
> Moderators: Sarah Webb, Syracuse; Ajit Pyati, UCLA
> 
> Michel Menou, Somos at Telecentros
> Renee Kuriyan, Akshaya Project, Kerala; UC Berkeley
> One Child Per Laptop organizational representative
> Randy Stoecker, University of Wisconsin-Madison
> 
> 
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