Welcome 2012 from RAD-AID International: Radiology Serving the World

When a new year comes, it’s a time to reflect on the past year and dream for the new year.  RAD-AID is grateful to it supporters and contributors, which made 2011 a year of great progress.  The RAD-AID Conference grew by 50% over prior years and presented more projects from all over the world than ever before.  RAD-AID’s network has broadened to more than 725 members with 15 institutional partners. Work on the RAD-AID Textbook began in 2011. Multiple new partnerships and collaborations began, including American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT), Association for Radiologic and Imaging Nursing (ARIN), World Health Organization’s regional office of Pan American Health Organization (WHO/PAHO), CRUDEM Foundation in Haiti,  Radiology Mammography International (RMI), and the World Radiography Educational Trust Fund (WRETF).  These partnerships reflect a clear priority at RAD-AID for building strong multidisciplinary teams of complementary skills for international radiology services in the developing world.  These multidisciplinary teams consist of radiologists (MDs), radiologic nurses, technologists, sonographers, public health officials, business leaders, and the public policy community to develop long-term approaches to health care disparity.

Building on this great momentum, RAD-AID is already working hard in the first few weeks of January with exciting plans ahead. RAD-AID’s Haiti Team arrived in Milot, Haiti on January 4th to work in post-earthquake devastated Haiti. The team is working to build medical and nursing education programs in Haiti as a means of restoring Haiti’s health care capacity.  RAD-AID’s India team returns to Northern India in January to begin launching the Women’s Healthcare Mobile Outreach Program, which follows more than 18 months of collaborative planning with hospital and public health partners in India.  RAD-AID’s China delegation returned from Beijing in December in ongoing work to advance Chinese educational radiology, offering new opportunities for radiologists in the U.S. and China to work together in research, training, and patient-care.  In the first quarter of 2012, a RAD-AID team heads to Ghana for a Radiology- Readiness Assessment, after meeting with Ghana’s Ambassador in 2011.  Plans are underway with WHO/PAHO to deploy Radiology-Readiness in multiple Latin American countries such as Nicaragua in 2012.  RAD-AID is now piloting a Chapters Program, enabling ACGME-accredited institutions in the U.S. to establish RAD-AID Chapters for residents, faculty, technologists, nurses, and other staff for their own grass-roots global health projects.

All this effort is aimed at addressing critical health care disparities around the world.  Medical imaging is a vital part of health care, particularly for diagnosing disease, screening populations for early detection, and monitoring treatment, such as chest x-ray radiography for lung infections, ultrasound for maternal-fetal health, and mammography for breast cancer.  RAD-AID enthusiastically pursues a strategy of having projects in multiple regions, involving multiple imaging technologies, and diverse multi-skilled teams to develop and test new solutions.  We hope you will continue to support RAD-AID. Please join our online forum at Facebook, form a chapter at your academic medical center, and attend the 2012 RAD-AID Conference at Johns Hopkins.  By working together, our creativity, drive and vision of a better future can be achieved.

Happy New Year from the RAD-AID Team!

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