Crossing the Innovation Chasm: Identifying Facilitators and Barriers to Early Adoption of the Global Health Starter Kit Curriculum

Abstract

Purpose: The Global Health Starter Kit (GHSK) is an interdisciplinary, competency-based, open access global health curriculum covering global disease and demographic trends, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the connection between oral health and overall health, social determinants of health, and concepts of sustainable and ethical global health programs. In this study, we evaluate and describe barriers to and facilitators for using and implementing the GHSK curriculum across a variety of new users. Methods: This two-phase study uses the Roger’s Adoption Curve concept to standardize this evaluation and inform a strategic plan for continuing to move the curriculum across the chasm from early adopters to an early majority of global oral health educators and learners. We utilized a theoretical adoption framework to identify facilitators and barriers under the domains of innovation and curricular, educator and learner, and institutional and structural factors. Under qualitative Phase 1, five early adopter institutions were interviewed to elicit understanding of factors that contribute to adoption of the GHSK curriculum. Common themes identified were next used to create a Phase 2 quantitative survey for early majority subscribers of the GHSK (N = 27). Results: These qualitative and quantitative results showed an overall high satisfaction with the quality of the GHSK materials, but also effectively identified barriers to its adoption, including inexperience of faculty in teaching global oral health, a lack of awareness and marketing, and absence of global health accrediting requirements. Conclusions: By identifying the barriers and facilitators of GHSK curriculum integration, this study provides concrete and specific opportunities to improve its format, relevance, content, and delivery. This study outlines next steps to creating a standardized approach to successfully adopting competency-based global oral health teaching and learning.

Relationships between Oral Health and the Sustainable Development Goals: A Scoping Review

“…Table 1 shows that there were 12 studies conducted that specifically focused on oral health and the targets of the sustainable development goal. The 12 studies were published between 2015 and 2023: one in 2015 [26], one in 2018 [19], three in 2021 [27,29,30], and five in 2022 [21][22][23][24]28]. These studies were published in the African Region specifically from Egypt [29], and from the European Region from Turkey [23].…”

“…These studies were published in the African Region specifically from Egypt [29], and from the European Region from Turkey [23]. Ten of the studies were not country specific [19][20][21][22][24][25][26][27][28]30].…”

“…The types of studies directly linking oral health to the goals of SDGs range from those that gave expert opinions (short communications [21,24], editorial [26], position paper [30]), to observational studies (cross-sectional studies [23,29], mix-method study [27]), reviews (narrative reviews [19,20,22,25]) and a policy paper [28].…”

“…Study populations referred to in the study ranged from children [22,23] to pregnant women [19], people with disabilities [24], oral and maxillofacial surgeons [20], and dental schools [27]. The focus of the studies ranged from early childhood caries [22,23] to oral health and pregnancy [19], and to Universal Health Coverage [26,28].…”

Green Technology Transfer, Environmental Regulation, and Regional Green Development Chasm: Based on the Empirical Evidence from Yangtze River Delta

“…Generally, chasm is similar to the concepts such as imbalance and disparity, which is widely used in discussions on digital chasm [ 18 ], innovation chasm [ 19 ], governance chasm [ 20 ], and ideological chasm [ 21 ]. In the context of global climate crisis, the green development chasm has become a hot topic in academia to discuss the inequalities in the global green economy level, green technology, and green system [ 22 , 23 ].…”