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An Interview With Dr. Barry Goldberg

by Robert Garment, Executive Editor | May 05, 2008

Goldberg:. When JUREI was started we charged for our courses for those who could afford to pay. We also produced educational materials that we sold to people who could afford them - physicians and sonographers, etc. That money has been used to support our education center, so it's self-supporting. However, there were so many people from the disadvantaged areas of the world that couldn't afford to come here and learn, and I wanted to find a way for them to come. Around 1992 or 1993 - when we were first recognized by the World Health Organization as a unique resource of ultrasound training - I went out to raise money. The first grant I got was from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and then subsequently from the Open Society Institute, which was funded by George Soros, and then more recently from the RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) Research and Education Fund. Those grants - which I think total well over $4 million dollars now - have allowed us to select individuals from developing countries who are experienced in ultrasound and have an interest in teaching their people and we bring them over here. In fact, over the last fifteen years, we have run a number of "Teach the Teacher" programs. We bring in physicians from developing nations, and we've pretty much have had people from every area of the world. We train them during an intensive three month program in all the aspects of ultrasound that are appropriate for their areas of the world. We administer a pre-exam when they come and a post-exam when they leave. We then follow up to see how much they've learned and retained. For those selected, we help them to set up training centers in their countries, and we seek the support of their medical school or their government. We send them back, once they have completed the intensive three month program here at Jefferson, with educational materials, with examinations that they can give to their students that we grade, so we know how successfully they're teaching their students. For those areas which cannot afford ultrasound equipment for teaching we have gone out and gotten donations from major ultrasound companies through a non-profit corporation called the Global Ultrasound Equipment Donation Foundation that is working with us. We have shipped hundreds of ultrasound machines around the world to help these poor areas. It's sort of a multi-pronged effort: teaching, setting up centers, providing educational material, and providing equipment. As a result of these efforts we have now more than 72 education centers in the developing parts of the world where our affiliated centers are helping others to learn ultrasound. I am currently the education chair of our World Federation of Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (WFUMB), and I am also heading up the Radiology Outreach Foundation (ROF). We're trying to put much more emphasis on computer-based education, while also sending educational materials to needy centers. To that end, we're using more and more DVDs, which are easier to send than books or journals, and are disseminating information by the best lecturers to areas of the world that might never have had access to them before. We feel this is the wave of the future.

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