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ScholarRx, a leading provider of digital learning tools for medical schools globally, is excited to announce a new collaboration with the Kern National Network for Flourishing in Medicine (KNN), a movement focused on transforming the profession of medicine by integrating a framework of character, caring, practical wisdom, and flourishing. This collaboration will generate engaging, open-access educational modules that empower medical educators and students to go beyond technical skills and explore deeper issues of meaning, purpose, and belonging within medicine.

The KNN will use ScholarRx’s innovative Bricks Create platform to author and share modules on topics related to the KNN Framework for Flourishing, grounded in interdisciplinary scholarship and practical applications. With a focus on learner-centered, pedagogically sound content, Bricks Create will enable modular, customizable content with active learning elements.

“This partnership is a testament to our shared commitment to cultivating nurturing, well-rounded physicians through the power of open educational resources,” said Tao Le, MD, CEO of ScholarRx. “With the Kern National Network, we are helping forge a path that empowers medical educators and students to explore the dimensions of purpose and belonging with medicine.”

“We are honored to collaborate with ScholarRx to address important topics that are often not included in formal medical school curricula today, yet are deeply meaningful to learners, professionals, and leaders in academic medicine,” said Cheryl A. Maurana, PhD, MCW Eminent Scholar, Senior Vice President for Academic Partnerships, Professor of Population Health at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Founding Director of the KNN.

“Together, we will support faculty and future physicians in reimagining medical training and practice so that it nurtures the passion, sense of connection, and continuous growth that originally inspired these individuals to join the field,” said Kimara Ellefson, MBA, National Director of Partnerships and Strategy for the KNN.

Ultimately, the collaboration will catalyze ScholarRx and the KNN’s efforts to provide accessible, sustainable medical education that positively influences the culture of medicine and advances flourishing – for leaders, faculty, staff, and learners, as well as their patients and communities.

About ScholarRx

ScholarRx is a mission-based organization of passionate medical educators, designers, and technologists dedicated to building a healthier world through accessible, sustainable medical education. ScholarRx offers a revolutionary, low-cost, multi-competency curriculum system featuring interconnectable “learning Bricks” powered by the groundbreaking Rx Bricks Create authoring tool, helping make this the world’s first sharable health science curriculum platform.

About the Kern National Network for Flourishing in Medicine

The Kern National Network for Flourishing in Medicine (KNN) is a movement focused on integrating four foundational elements within the profession of medicine: character, caring, practical wisdom, and flourishing. The KNN advances this work by connecting and convening stakeholders across the health ecosystem, catalyzing transformative initiatives, and influencing policy and systems change toward healthier, positive organizational cultures.

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Multiple, Impactful Images

One of the significant advantages of the image carousel is that you can add multiple images to your Brick. Before now, it was always a struggle to display and compare various images of medical conditions, especially when there are different stages to be covered. But that’s not the case anymore. With an image carousel, you can comfortably add up to ten images, allowing students to scroll horizontally through the photos with a simple click. This new method of displaying multiple images can add more visual impact to your teaching, making it easier for students to understand each stage of the medical condition.

Adding an image carousel is as easy as adding an image, a card, or a formula. To do so, use the toolbar and select the “Image Carousel” option.

You can drag and drop your images or use your device’s file finder to load them one at a time. Within the image carousel, you can add up to ten photos to display best whatever you’re trying to share with students.

You also have the option to add descriptions and attributions to your images and a title for them.

Your Slide Deck, Easily Accessible

We’ve also updated capabilities to include embedding PowerPoints, Google Slides, or PDFs. To embed a presentation, add a new element to your Brick, click “< >,”  aka “Add Embed,” and paste the link to your presentation. However, note that you can only embed presentations that are on the web or uploaded to a cloud-based server. Presentations that live on your computer or device cannot be embedded.

Improving Teaching and Learning Outcomes

Incorporating these new features encourages educators to create more engaging, interactive, and impactful courses. A histology class, for instance, can leverage the image carousel to teach students about cellular structures better. The carousel can help professors showcase various aspects of the cell that the students need to learn about, such as the Golgi apparatus, the nucleus, and the mitochondria.

High-Yield Learning That’s Faculty Friendly

At ScholarRx, we’re committed to delivering an exceptional learning experience. The new features we’ve introduced today, the image carousel and the ability to embed presentations, will make online teaching more engaging and impactful. We’re excited to see how you use these new features.!

The post The Release of Two Powerful Features Within Bricks Create – Image Carousel and Embedding Presentations appeared first on ScholarRx.

Air pollution is responsible for an estimated 7 million premature deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization. The burden falls most heavily on people living in rapidly industrializing cities in low- and middle-income countries, where manufacturing and energy production are concentrated.

Power plants, factories, vehicles, and refineries release carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter into the air. These pollutants enter the lungs and bloodstream, contributing to respiratory disease, cardiovascular conditions, and neurologic harm. Children are particularly vulnerable, with exposure linked to impaired lung development and measurable cognitive effects.

There is no safe level of exposure. While individuals can take steps to reduce indoor pollutants, meaningful reductions in ambient air pollution depend on public policy, industrial practice, and infrastructure.

Delhi was ranked the most polluted major city in the world in 2022. At the same time, regulatory efforts such as the U.S. Clean Air Act demonstrate that emissions standards can measurably improve air quality and population health. Air pollution is not simply an environmental issue; it is a preventable driver of clinical disease.

Integrating Air Pollution Into Health Professions Education

Environmental exposure is often addressed in public health contexts, but its clinical implications are not always made explicit in core medical education. Yet learners routinely care for patients whose asthma, coronary artery disease, stroke risk, pregnancy outcomes, or cognitive development are shaped by air quality.

Helping students connect environmental exposure to pathophysiology and patient care decisions requires structure, relevant cases, and integration within existing coursework.

The Air Pollution brick in the MeSAGE Planetary Health collection was developed to support that work in collaboration with health professions educators. It:

• Reviews major pollutant categories and sources

• Links exposure to organ-system–specific outcomes

• Uses case-based questions to connect environmental data with clinical reasoning

• Introduces prevention and systems-level considerations within patient care discussions

The brick can be assigned as preparatory work before pulmonary, cardiology, neurology, pediatrics, or community health sessions. It can also be incorporated into discussions of prevention, health systems science, or social determinants of health.

Because the MeSAGE collection is published under a Creative Commons license, educators are free to adopt and adapt the material. Through the Bricks Create authoring platform, faculty can localize cases to reflect regional environmental challenges. A program in California might incorporate wildfire smoke exposure into a COPD case. A program in South Asia might contextualize particulate density in an urban pediatrics scenario. The underlying learning structure remains intact while the context becomes locally relevant.

Rather than adding a separate environmental health block, the brick helps faculty surface environmental determinants within the clinical teaching students already encounter.

The Air Pollution brick is available as part of the MeSAGE Planetary Health collection for educators who wish to integrate environmental determinants more explicitly into their curricula.

The post Air Pollution and the Clinical Consequences of Modern Life appeared first on ScholarRx.

Dr. Baranoski brings a deep portfolio of qualifications, starting with her MD from Drexel University and an MSc in Epidemiology from the Boston University School of Public Health. Recognized for her expertise in infectious diseases and HIV medicine, Dr. Baranoski recently served as an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases & HIV Medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine.

Dr. Baranoski is a dedicated medical educator with experience in curriculum development and accreditation. As the Associate Dean of the Phase One curriculum for the MD Program at Drexel, she helped shape the learning experiences for hundreds of students. Her passion for teaching and preparing future physicians was part of what attracted her to this new role.

Dr. Baranoski is also a practicing infectious diseases physician with clinical expertise in caring for people living with HIV. She has training in epidemiology and experience in clinical and translational research with a history of support from an NIH K12 grant and various other NIH-funded studies. Her research has focused on the intersection of HIV infection and aging and cervical and anal cancer screening for women with HIV.

Dr. Tao Le said, “We are delighted to have Dr. Amy Baranoski join ScholarRx. She is a multi-award winning medical educator who deeply understands student learning needs.”

About ScholarRx: ScholarRx is a mission-driven organization serving over 150,000 medical students and physician learners annually. ScholarRx recently launched the Brick Exchange, the first global shared curriculum exchange for health professionals, designed to empower faculty and medical schools to rapidly build and deploy high-quality education experiences, even in resource-constrained environments.

The post Dr. Amy Baranoski Joins ScholarRx as New Senior Director of Curriculum appeared first on ScholarRx.

“Climate change is the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.” – The World Health Organization

A New Rx Brick Collection from MeSAGE

The Medical Student Alliance for Global Education, or MeSAGE, has released its newest collection of Rx Bricks, which focuses on Planetary Health. This set of free, open-access digital learning modules from ScholarRx covers the interplay between human health and the environment, aiming to equip current and future healthcare professionals with everything they need to effectively address the impact of a shifting climate.

Why Planetary Health?

The climate continues to impact our lives, leading the World Health Organization to say, “It threatens the essential ingredients of good health – clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food supply and safe shelter – and has the potential to undermine decades of progress in global health.”

According to WHO, “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress alone. The direct damage costs to health are estimated to be between US $2-4 billion per year by 2030. Areas with weak health infrastructure – mostly in developing countries – will be the least able to cope without assistance to prepare and respond.”

We see the effects of climate change more and more each year. From warming, rising oceans to hotter temperatures, increased drought, and more severe storms, it’s nearly impossible to escape them. As these effects lead to species losses, less food, poverty, displacement, and compounding health risks, we must prepare health professionals for the myriad of questions and issues they will see.

These Bricks provide an in-depth look into how planetary health will affect the medical profession. Climate change’s impacts on different sectors of society are interrelated, with drastic results and harmful consequences hovering on the horizon. This interrelation will influence many doctors’ care decisions, and having a solid foundational understanding of planetary health is vital.

Created under the oversight of lead editor and planetary health expert Michelle McLean, Ph.D., these peer-reviewed Bricks are quick and easy to deploy in your curriculum or courses. Topics in the Planetary Health collection include:

• Air Pollution
• Climate Change and Health
• Environmental Justice
• Food and Water Security
• Mental Health and the Environment
• Severe Weather Events

And so much more. Please learn more about the collection here.

What is MeSAGE?

MeSAGE aims to empower student organizations with the tools and expertise to build medical education content that often falls outside the traditional curriculum and make that content freely available to any student, school, or institution worldwide.

MeSAGE is the largest student-driven curriculum alliance on the planet, composed of student organizations representing over 1.3 million medical students in over 130 countries, from partners including:

• AMSA: The American Medical Student Association
• AMWA: The American Medical Women’s Association
• APSA: American Physician Scientsists’ Association
• AMSA-International: Asian Medical Students’ Association
• EMSA: The European Medical Students’ Association
• FAMSA: Federation of African Medical Students’ Associations
• IFMSA: International Federation of Medical Students Associations
• Phi Delta Epsilon: The International Medical Fraternity
• SNMA: The Student National Medical Association
• SNO: Student Network Organization
• SOMA: The Student Osteopathic Medical Association

MeSAGE utilizes the groundbreaking digital learning platform Rx Bricks to create interactive educational modules that focus on critical topics identified during a global needs assessment, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, digital health, planetary health, students as educators, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Together, we aim to leverage the expertise and passion of medical students to develop engaging and open medical education content that educators worldwide can use.

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To ring in March, we have released two updated Brick editions – Hematology and Cardiovascular. We consistently update our Bricks to stay up-to-date and accurate. Still, we also conduct more extensive revisions of the collections to improve your students’ learning experience.

You can access the first editions, toggle seamlessly between both, or move forward with the new versions. Check out the Conversion Guides below for more information.

Switch Easily Between Brick Versions

You can just use Editions 1 and 2 with little effort. Click the down arrow and move the collections with ease!

Why were these Bricks updated?

Students and faculty from across the world reach out with feedback on ScholarRx’s Bricks, and when you do, we listen. We aim for our Bricks to be evergreen, and while we always strive for accuracy, we make revisions when there are ways in which we can improve our approach and content. We are incredibly thankful to all who have helped us achieve our mission of sustainable medical education by enhancing our instructional design.

Is anything else new?

We continued beyond updates, of course. You will also see the following:

• New and improved illustrations
• Fewer mnemonics
• More standardized Bricks with formatting you will find throughout our platform
• Even more high-yield content
• Please learn more by reading our Conversion Guides:
  • Cardiovascular Conversion Guide
  • Hematology Conversion Guide
    • PDF
    • Word

We hope you and your students put these updated Bricks to good use. Together, we’re on the path toward sustainable, engaging medical education.

The post New Rx Cardiovascular and Hematology Brick Editions for 2023 appeared first on ScholarRx.

ScholarRx is proud to announce a new partnership with the National Association of Medical Spanish (NAMS), which works to improve the quality of care for Spanish-speaking patients. 

The partnership will focus on the collaboration and development of open access, sharable Bricks in areas related to medical Spanish, designed to be published and shared across the world. ScholarRx will be providing grant support to fund the collaborative development and implementation efforts.

Along with helping to drive and develop the medical Spanish curriculum, NAMS members will receive access to these materials through the Rx Bricks digital learning system developed by ScholarRx, including the Bricks Create authoring platform. 

According to Dr. Pilar Ortega, Founder and President of NAMS, “Our team is very excited about the opportunity to partner with ScholarRx on increasing accessible high-quality educational resources for communicating with the Hispanic/Latinx community. Many students and doctors have some Spanish skills they would like to use in patient care but may lack the resources to use or enhance those skills professionally. Improving how we teach clinicians to effectively use their skills to communicate with linguistically diverse patient populations is key to advancing health equity through education, and NAMS is proud to play a pioneering role through medical Spanish content.” 

“NAMS is playing a critical role in helping achieve global health equity by focusing on the improvement of patient-physician communication through medical Spanish,” said Dr. Tao Le, founder, and CEO of ScholarRx. “We are pleased to support their important work in preparing health professionals so that they can provide linguistically and culturally appropriate care to the Spanish-speaking patients they serve.” 

About Scholar Rx

ScholarRx is a mission-based organization of passionate medical educators, designers, and technologists dedicated to building a healthier world through accessible, sustainable medical education. ScholarRx offers a revolutionary, low-cost, multi-competency curriculum system featuring interconnectable “learning bricks,” powered by the groundbreaking Rx Bricks Create authoring tool, helping make this the world’s first sharable health science curriculum platform.

About NAMS

NAMS is a non-profit interdisciplinary group of highly qualified medical and language professionals who work together to improve health equity, patient safety, clinician communication skills, and quality of care for Spanish-speaking students. Our goal is to create a standardized evidence-based approach to teaching medical Spanish as well as promoting and assessing bilingualism among students and clinicians in the United States.  

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Educators today are flooded with new digital platforms that promise student engagement and broader reach. But many of these systems force users to work within walled gardens that don’t allow for meaningful collaboration or resource efficiency. As a result, medical schools continue to develop custom but redundant curricular content, despite having limited faculty and financial resources.

The Rx Bricks platform was built to address these challenges head-on with the first-of-its-kind sharable curricular component ecosystem, developed around foundational learning objectives that align with core competencies for all medical students. The Rx Bricks library has over 800 ready-to-use digital modules that cover the basic sciences, with more on the way.

The new Rx Bricks Create authoring tool opens a new chapter in this evolution, putting the power of content creation in the hands of the instructor. Educators can easily develop and share multimedia Bricks suited for the learning needs of their students. They can also clone, edit, and customize any of the Rx Bricks, reducing educator work burden and preserving academic control by allowing faculty to curate, modify, and create what they need.

Dr. Tao Le, founder and CEO of ScholarRx, comments, “Rx Bricks Create is the next step in our commitment to empower educators with the tools and content that meet the changing needs of their students while reflecting the unique nature of their curriculum.”

As the academic world adapts to the disruptions brought on by the ongoing pandemic, this revolutionary curricular ecosystem frees up faculty time so that they can focus on high-value teaching activities for their students. These same students benefit from a consistent education experience that better aligns with national licensure exams.

Rx Bricks Create represents a major leap forward for open medical education worldwide. Shared curriculum enables the global community of medical educators to better prepare the next generation of doctors in collaboration. ScholarRx is proud to advance its mission to build a healthier world through accessible, sustainable medical education with Rx Bricks Create.

Reach out to learn how you can use Rx Bricks Create at your school: https://scholarrx.com/contact/

About ScholarRx: ScholarRx is a mission-driven organization currently serving over 150,000 medical students and physician learners annually. ScholarRx’s revolutionary componentized, multi-competency curricular platform empowers medical schools and medical student organizations to rapidly develop high-quality education experiences, even in resource-constrained environments.

The post ScholarRx Launches World’s First Sharable Medical Education Platform appeared first on ScholarRx.