2010 South African Association of Health Educationalists (SAAHE) Conference

The third annual conference of the South African Association of Health Educationalists (SAAHE) was held July 22-24 at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The conference, themed “Making Education Matter,” focused on health professions education and health care delivery, and attracted local and regional experts as well as guests from the United Kingdom, the United States, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Discussions centered on the impact that good health science education has on improving patient care. During this year’s conference, SAAHE hosted the first Distinguished SAAHE Educator lecture, presented by Vanessa Burch (PHIL 2001), Co-Director of the Southern Africa-FAIMER Regional Institute (SAFRI) and Chair of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cape Town. Her address, “Primary Health Care—How Far Have We Come?” challenged conference attendees to rethink some of their approaches to the education of health science professionals as a means of enhancing primary health care. FAIMER Associate Vice President for Education and Co-Director of the FAIMER Institute William Burdick, M.D., M.S.Ed., was one of six keynote speakers, and more than 30 FAIMER Fellows from SAFRI and the FAIMER Institute were among the conference presenters. Rachel Weiss (SAFRI 2009) won first prize for her poster “The PIL Project: Doctors and the Language of Design,” based on her SAFRI innovation project. For more information on the SAAHE 2010 conference, including a complete program listing, see http://web.wits.ac.za/NewsRoom/Conferences/SAAHE/.