Facebook posts, Twitter tweets—we are being deluged with knowledge sharing these days. Although, we probably shouldn’t call it “knowledge” as it’s more data or information about what a person is doing versus what a person really knows. This perhaps begs the question about whether we have become overzealous with knowledge sharing—is it harmful in the sense that we may miss the important golden gems of knowledge nuggets among the vast tunnels of over-information?

Since 2008, when I graduated with my Master of Public Health degree, I haven’t had much urge to take any academic courses. Time is a big factor, as well as money, which I feel is a large barrier to accessing advanced education for many in this country and throughout the world. In the end of January I decided to add to my knowledge on contraceptive methods and take a course from University of Southern California through Coursera. Coursera started just last year and is “a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free.” Coursera’s mission is to bridge the education gap by offering classes from ivy league schools and other top universities to everyone in the world with access to the Internet. So far Coursera has won Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2013 as well as TechCrunch’s  2012 Crunchies’ “Best Overall Startup.” With a great deal of promise, it is a great start for online learning and thinking through education from a different perspective. In theory, offering education for free is wonderful, but Coursera has had some growing pains as its first courses start to roll out.

About 600 million women in the developing world use some form of contraception, but only 1% to 2% of them are using long-acting, contraceptive implants. Surveys show that as many as 20% would prefer them, if they were available, according to a USAID press release.

Jadelle ® levonorgestrel contraceptive implants

Availability is now less of a problem thanks to a new partnership agreement between the government of Norway and other partners and the manufacturer of one of three implants, Jadelle, to reduce the current price, from US$18/set to around $8.50/set, in return for a commitment to assure funding for at least 27 million contraceptive devices for women and girls in low-income countries over the next six years.

The partnership agreement is expected to prevent almost 30 million unwanted pregnancies by 2018 and will save an estimated US$250 million in global health costs. When fully implemented, the agreement will avert more than 280,000 child and 30,000 maternal deaths due to improved birth spacing and by avoiding other problems such as preterm births. According to the WHO, waiting at least 2–3 years between pregnancies reduces infant and child mortality and benefits maternal health.

The Global Education and Technology Summit (GETHealth) was held February 6-7, 2013, at the United Nations in New York City. Convened by the Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education (CCGE), The Global Partnerships Forum and co-hosted by the governments of Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda, the Summit aimed to bring people working in health education and technology together to work towards bridging the health workforce gap in developing countries through new partnerships and innovation.  There were over 400 people in attendance, about half from developing countries, primarily African.

While the two-day conference was flush with bright ideas, engaging conversations, and interesting perspectives, a few points really stood out for me.