Health researcher addresses UN event


LAWRENCE — Christina Holt, associate director of KU Work Group for Community Health and Development at the Life Span Institute, addressed the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development at UN Headquarters in New York City earlier this month. The Work Group is one of the only UN World Health Organization Collaborating Centers on community health in the United States.

Holt, who directs the Community Tool Box, a website with more than 7000 pages on community health and development in English and Spanish, presented how the CTB is a resource for addressing the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

“We have been asked to help build the workforce to address the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, including ending poverty and ensuring healthy lives,” said Steve Fawcett, co-director of the WHO Collaborating Centre at KU. “As a comprehensive and widely used resource, the Tool Box is seen as an important asset for this global effort.”

The CTB was developed by the Work Group beginning in 1995, and in the past 12 months it has had more than 5.8 million visitors from 230 countries. The site is also being translated and culturally adapted in Arabic and will be translated into Portuguese, French, Chinese and Russian.

Among its features is a robust, 16-module training curriculum that supports community health and development trainers around the globe.

“In Ghana, the CTB has been adopted for training hundreds of community health students at the University for Development Studies,” Holt said.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded the Work Group $250,000 this spring to sustain the CTB. 

Thu, 07/16/2015

author

Karen Henry

Media Contacts

Karen Henry

Life Span Institute

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