Scalable global dermatology education.

To the Editor: Global dermatology education is at a crossroads. Recently in JAAD International, Revankar et al outlined the successful deployment of an educational initiative in teaching basic dermatology content to medical students in Ethiopia. Relying on their own freely available online course content that includes approximately 20 hours of instruction, the authors demonstrated that completing a 10-module course resulted in significant gains from baseline levels of comfort and proficiency in some of the fundamental principles of dermatology. Moreover, the online course resulted in significantly higher scores on the final examination than were seen historically when similar content was delivered in a traditional in-person manner. Other recent work published in the Journal has explored the myriad ways in which traditional medical education can be augmented by approaches such as teledermatology.,

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented important opportunities for broadening the educational reach of dermatologists worldwide, and some of the most critical potential gains may be seen in education. Indeed, expanding access to high-quality dermatology education is one of the most pressing needs in the global dermatology community, and it represents one of the most efficient and effective ways to address persistent global inequity. Historically, such educational initiatives have depended on the availability of experienced, expert educators, yet such in-person initiatives—despite their obvious benefits—were limited by the significant financial and logistic burdens that they imposed. Pivoting to online approaches to dermatology education may afford an opportunity to scale up access while minimizing cost, thus permitting the delivery of even higher-quality content to ever-broader communities of trainees. Further research investigating similar online educational platforms, and potentially hybrid platforms that include the ability to directly engage with global dermatology educators, may be helpful.

Conflicts of interest

None disclosed.