Canada Research Chair Tier 1 in Preventive Medicine and Population Health
Erica Frank
Dr. Erica Frank, a Professor in the School of Population and Public Health, is an educational innovator, physician, medical researcher, and public health advocate. She has built NextGenU.org, the world’s first portal to free, accredited higher education.
Through her CRC, Dr. Frank has tested this novel tool and found NextGenUsers performing at levels comparable to and even better than students at traditional American medical and public health schools. Over the next 5 years, NextGenU will co-train (in collaboration with the University of Gezira and the Sudanese Ministry of Health) 10,000 Family Medicine and Preventive Medicine Residents in Sudan, a country desperately in need of more well-trained health care providers.
Dr. Frank is showing that unconventional methods of learning made possible with current technology can erase existing barriers to education, and that online plus mentored/peer-guided learning is an effective way to rapidly increase the number of highly trained healthcare workers for countries in need.