Ipas is pleased to launch its online learning center, IpasUniversity, or IpasU, for reproductive health-care providers, especially those in the developing world. IpasU is a self-paced learning site on the Internet with a focus on safe abortion care and postabortion care. IpasU provides training, whenever it’s needed and without cost to learners. The site is for clinicians, as well as those who work with developing world health-care workers.
“We developed IpasU to help to expand our reach, providing online learning both for clinicians in countries where we do not have established programs and partnerships, as well as to supplement and increase the efficiency of training where we do have programs,” says Ipas Senior Advisor Marian Abernathy.
Ipas is an established leader in clinical training, with programs that reach approximately 16,000 people per year, most of them in the developing world. Traditionally, Ipas training has been associated with technical assistance to help health-care facilities and systems offer more women better care -- through increased quality of care, lowered costs and decentralization of services from referral hospitals to primary health-care facilities.
Online learning is a convenient, low-cost way to reach learners who have access to the internet. While it will not replace Ipas’s face-to-face training programs, it has potential to enhance them as part of a blended learning approach. Many of Ipas’s learners have access to the Web and may be able to gain knowledge before or between traditional instructor-led training.
In developing IpasUniversity, Ipas leveraged resources gained through membership in LINGOs (Learning for International NGOs) a nonprofit consortium of international nongovernmental organizations that provides communities of practice, learning software, eLearning experts and more.
For more information, contact media@ipas.org