Online Forum: FP and HIV Service Integration: Experiences and Evidence

Online Forum: June 1-5, 2009

Register for free at http://my.ibpinitiative.org/public/fphivintegration

Please join us in a global discussion forum on family planning (FP) and HIV service integration. This forum will review the experiences of, and evidence for, integrating FP and HIV services. Share your experiences, challenges, and lessons learned, and pose questions and discuss with experts including:

*Rose Wilcher, Senior Technical Officer, Family Health International
*Betty Farrell, Senior Technical Advisor for Integration, EngenderHealth
*Heidi Reynolds, Senior Technical Specialist HIV/AIDS, MEASURE Evaluation

To register, go to http://my.ibpinitiative.org/public/fphivintegration and click on “register” in the upper left corner of the screen and fill in the required information. If you are already a member of the FP/HIV Integration Community in the Implementing Best Practices (IBP) Knowledge Gateway, click “login” in the upper left corner of the screen. Questions? Send an e-mail to info@ibpinitiative.org.

During the week long forum, you will receive no more than two emails per day; one email to introduce the day’s topic and questions and one daily digest, with all contributions screened and presented as a single, well-organized digest. You will be able to participate in the forum simply by responding to this daily digest via e-mail or by logging into the IBP Knowledge Gateway at http://my.ibpinitiative.org/public/fphivintegration.

This online discussion is sponsored by Family Health International (FHI), EngenderHealth, MEASURE Evaluation, and the Knowledge for Health (K4H) Project, based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs in collaboration with the Implementing Best Practices (IBP) in Reproductive Health Initiative and WHO.

New Resources for Developing Presentations and Training Opportunities for Reproductive Health

The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP) is now offering two free services to students, faculty and professionals interested in reproductive health, The Global Opportunities Tool (GO Tool) and the Curricula Organizer for Reproductive Health Education (CORE).

The Curricula Organizer for Reproductive Health Education is an open access tool for those interested in building scientific presentations on reproductive health topics. All learning materials are clinically accurate, up to date, peer reviewed and presentation-ready. You can choose to search materials using your own keywords or browse the material by category. When searching under the category "contraception" I found more than 430 individual slides, 40 activities and handouts, and 11 full presentations. The site makes it easy to pull an individual slide to contribute to your own presentation, or to download a fully completed, ready to use presentation. New content is added weekly, and you can request to join their mailing list to stay up to date on the latest CORE material.

The Global Opportunities Tool is a comprehensive resource that connects students in health professions to domestic and international reproductive health training opportunities. You can search available openings by clicking on the continent you are interested in working in, and available positions will present themselves. As of now, only a few countries have available opportunities outside of America, but there is also a component of the site which allows users to submit an opportunity, and I expect that this database will soon become much more extensive.

Both the GO Tool and CORE are great resources for health professionals interested in reproductive health, and I would highly recommend that anyone interested check out their site.

The GO Tool: http://www.arhp.org/publications-and-resources/student-and-educator-resources/global-opportunities-tool

CORE: http://www.arhp.org/publications-and-resources/core

Converting PDFs to editable documents

One of the most common ICT-related questions asked by PPD's partners is how to convert Adobe PDF documents to Microsoft (MS) Word or another editable format. Until recently, it has not been easy without the purchase of expensive (around $300US!) software.

A new website called PDFtoWord will convert PDF documents to MS Word (or just text) for free and email them to you: http://www.pdftoword.com/

We've tried out this site for a while and it works wonderfully! The MS Word results are impressively faithful to the PDF originals, including all graphics, lines, boxes, and bullets that can be easily edited to your liking. In addition, the conversion can also pull readable text from scanned images.

To use this converter site, all you have to do is:
1) Go to the website http://www.pdftoword.com/
2) Upload a PDF
3) Choose Word or Rich Text Format (RTF) (choose MS Word if you want full formating and graphics or RTF if you only want the text), and
4) Enter your email address.
5) Check your email inbox-- it may take a few minutes to receive the file.


Converting Microsoft (MS) Word documents to PDF has always been much easier. Newer versions of MS Office can save documents as PDF, and there are plenty of free online and downloadable programs that can do this.

1) One of the easiest free websites to use is PrimoOnline. It converts documents, images and websites to PDF for free: https://online.primopdf.com

2) You can always convert through your email inbox:
These email addresses do free file conversion for Word docs, PDFs, and even MP3s easily-- all you have to do is send an email with an attached file and you will shortly receive a reply with the converted file attached.

• pdf@koolwire.com—Converts MS Word, Excel or PowerPoint files to PDFs.
  
• doc@koolwire.com—Convert PDFs to MS Word or Rich Text Format files.

3) If you convert a number of documents, files, and websites to PDFs, you can download free software such as PDFCreator: http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator

Technology Tip for Viewing Slow-Loading Websites

A quick tip for viewing websites that are full of images and Flash animation on a slow internet connection.

IYHY is a web-based service that acts as a text-only proxy, stripping down websites for faster load times.

The website IYHY returns just the basic text of the site you plug into it. It removes graphics and images, but keep links so that you can still navigate.

There is no login required for the basic service, but with a free account you can save your most frequently accessed sites to save time.

Try out IYHY at http://www.iyhy.com/