By Allison Kozicharow; Edited by Elizabeth Fine
In my view, WiRED International’s Continuing Medical Education (CME) Program is the most impactful global program our volunteers have produced in our 30-year history. It offers a critical resource for community health workers (CHWs) to retain knowledge and develop new skills without imposing a cost on desperately poor communities. To date, no other organization anywhere has attempted to create a professional-level program with the features WiRED now offers for CHWs in low-resource environments globally.
—Gary Selnow, Ph.D., WiRED Executive Director
Today WiRED International rolls out our updated Continuing Medical Education (CME) Program and its corresponding webpage. In response to last year’s severe budget cuts to global health by the Trump administration, WiRED launched several critical programs including CME to address shortfalls faced by community health workers (CHWs) operating in underserved communities.
Wired designed our World Health Organization (WHO)–compliant CME Program for CHWs and frontline health providers. The CME Program, like ALL our programs, is free of cost and available to all CHWs trained by WiRED or other organizations. The program is also open to teachers, students, universities and health ministries.
The enhanced CME Program is a mobile-based training platform that delivers hundreds of WiRED-created, evidence-based and peer-reviewed modules directly into the hands of CHWs. The modules are continuously updated. Moreover, to arm CHWs with the latest prevention and diagnostic tools, WiRED’s medical writers quickly create new modules in response to emerging diseases. CHWs can also request training material for health challenges surfacing in their communities. All WiRED modules are accessible on smartphones, either for Android or iOS, via our HealthMAP app, even in low-bandwidth environments. WiRED also designed a thoroughly tested CME Tracker tool that enables users to record their credits and their progress to maintain certification — an annual requirement.
The CME Program offers practical training across a wide range of health priories, including:
Health education and behavioral change communication — a priority- Infectious diseases (TB, HIV, malaria, respiratory illnesses and emerging outbreaks)
- Maternal, newborn and child health
- One Health topics of growing importance due to climate change impacting the globe
- Noncommunicable diseases such as hypertension and diabetes
- Nutrition, sanitation and preventive care
Community surveillance and outbreak response- Referral, triage and coordination with local health systems.
In sum, WiRED’s CME Program is unique. We encourage you to learn more about it on the new CME webpage!
Why Invest in the WiRED Program?
The WiRED CME Program offers an extraordinary return on a modest investment by delivering impact-per-dollar training of CHWs. A single trained CHW can serve hundreds — or thousands — of people over time. When a CHW is continuously educated, the impact multiplies. WHO has recognized this for many years and has stressed the need for CME, although it hasn’t provided a globally accessible program to provide it. WiRED has now done that in keeping with WHO guidelines.
Despite our volunteer-driven model, small size, modest budget and limited resources, WiRED has widely expanded our CME Program (as well as our CHW Program).
With minimal funding from our donors, the program can:
- reach thousands of CHWs simultaneously,
- strengthen care for entire communities, not just individual patients and continue delivering value year after year without repeated training costs.
