Aquifer is pleased to announce the upcoming release of our new Social Determinants of Health Course on July 1, 2021. This course will include an overview module and two virtual patient cases to be available free of charge to all teachers and learners, whether or not they subscribe to Aquifer. We are proud to provide universal access to content focusing on this critically important topic in health care education.
As the leading provider of online health professions education teaching and learning tools, Aquifer is dedicated to ensuring that our educational materials do not perpetuate stereotypes in healthcare and education and that our courses incorporate continuous review and contemporary teaching about social determinants of health. The launch of this new course content is one step in advancing learning explicitly related to these topics in our content library.
As of our July 1, 2021 launch, the Aquifer Social Determinants of Health includes three modules:
- Overview module with general information on social determinants of health and definitions
- Two virtual patient cases illustrating the impact of language and poverty as social determinants of health. Although both cases cover pediatric patients, the topics and communication skills taught are applicable to patients of all ages.
Programs with a current Aquifer subscription will also have access to an accompanying educator guide with learning objectives and a new active learning module, providing a ready-to-use optional classroom activity to be used in conjunction with the cases. Subscribers will also be able to view student progress reporting and add the new cases to a custom course. This course, like all Aquifer content, is evidence-based, peer-reviewed, and will be continuously updated.
From Culture in Healthcare to Social Determinants of Health
Aquifer’s previous Culture in Healthcare course was retired on October 22, 2020, in order to thoroughly update the content and teaching about bias, health inequities, and healthcare outcomes. The Aquifer Social Determinants of Health Course builds on reframed versions of two former Culture in Healthcare cases. Cases have been revised to remove language and content related to cultural competency, and thoroughly reviewed to eliminate bias and stereotyping. The shorter, reformatted cases do retain the reflective components that were a part of the original Culture in Health cases.
Programs that requested special access to Aquifer Culture in Healthcare to complete their coursework have access to the archived course through June 30, 2021. As of July 1, the new Social Determinants of Health course will be available as a contemporary replacement for all teachers and learners. If you are currently using Aquifer Culture in Healthcare, please be sure to download any case completion reports that you need for those cases prior to June 30. For more details, view our side-by-side learning objectives comparison for Aquifer Culture in Healthcare and Social Determinants of health.
Commitment to Equity & Inclusion
Following a thorough review of all existing Aquifer cases according to our peer-reviewed and published criteria, our cases continue to be regularly reviewed based on these principles by teams of medical educators, with an eye toward optimizing this process to further ensure that current best practices are consistently integrated across our course library.
Aquifer looks forward to advancing this work and continuing to support faculty and students with contemporary, inclusive teaching resources.
