Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Published Ahead of Print
    • Archive
    • Supplemental Issues
    • Collections - French
    • Collections - English
  • Info for
    • Authors & Reviewers
    • Submit a Manuscript
    • Advertisers
    • Careers & Locums
    • Subscribers
    • Permissions
  • About CFP
    • About CFP
    • About the CFPC
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Terms of Use
    • Contact Us
  • Feedback
    • Feedback
    • Rapid Responses
    • Most Read
    • Most Cited
    • Email Alerts
  • Blogs
    • Latest Blogs
    • Blog Guidelines
    • Directives pour les blogues
  • Mainpro+ Credits
    • About Mainpro+
    • Member Login
    • Instructions
  • Other Publications
    • http://www.cfpc.ca/Canadianfamilyphysician/
    • https://www.cfpc.ca/Login/
    • Careers and Locums

User menu

  • My alerts

Search

  • Advanced search
The College of Family Physicians of Canada
  • Other Publications
    • http://www.cfpc.ca/Canadianfamilyphysician/
    • https://www.cfpc.ca/Login/
    • Careers and Locums
  • My alerts
The College of Family Physicians of Canada

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Published Ahead of Print
    • Archive
    • Supplemental Issues
    • Collections - French
    • Collections - English
  • Info for
    • Authors & Reviewers
    • Submit a Manuscript
    • Advertisers
    • Careers & Locums
    • Subscribers
    • Permissions
  • About CFP
    • About CFP
    • About the CFPC
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Terms of Use
    • Contact Us
  • Feedback
    • Feedback
    • Rapid Responses
    • Most Read
    • Most Cited
    • Email Alerts
  • Blogs
    • Latest Blogs
    • Blog Guidelines
    • Directives pour les blogues
  • Mainpro+ Credits
    • About Mainpro+
    • Member Login
    • Instructions
  • RSS feeds
  • Follow cfp Template on Twitter
Article CommentaryCommentary

Using TED Talks to teach social determinants of health

Maximize the message with a modern medium

Eileen Nicolle, Emmanuelle Britton, Praseedha Janakiram and Pierre-Marc Robichaud
Canadian Family Physician September 2014, 60 (9) 777-778;
Eileen Nicolle
A family Physician at Markham Stouffville Hospital in Ontario and at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Ont; as well as Lecturer, Pre-departure Training Co-coordinator, and Co-coordinator of the Enhanced Skills Year in Global Health and Vulnerable Populations, all in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: eileen.nicolle@gmail.com
Emmanuelle Britton
Clinical Lecturer in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, and a staff member at the South East Toronto Family Health Team, Toronto East General Hospital, and Bay Centre for Birth Control.
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Praseedha Janakiram
A Family Physician at the Crossroads Clinic at Women’s College Hospital, and Lecturer, Pre-departure Training Co-coordinator, and Co-coordinator of the Enhanced Skills Year in Global Health and Vulnerable Populations, all in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Pierre-Marc Robichaud
Second-year family medicine resident at the University of Ottawa in Ontario and Founder and President of Gems of Hope.
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • eLetters
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Our world is characterized by the rapid sharing of messages and knowledge. The ability of ideas to go “viral” demonstrates the infectious way that a concept can travel around the globe. As technological innovations facilitate connection and communication across distances, the landscape of learning is evolving. Lectures can be recorded ahead of time and viewed online, or speakers can use text, voice, and video services (eg, Skype) to present their sessions. Furthermore, some institutions now offer open access to their intellectual property, with a view to increasing accessibility.

Ideas worth spreading

Technology, Entertainment and Design Talks, commonly known as TED Talks, are an example of our ability to rapidly disseminate great ideas. These online talks, which are freely available and accessible, allow people worldwide to listen to thought-provoking speakers talk passionately about their areas of expertise (www.ted.com/talks). The TED community seeks to share “ideas worth spreading,” and in doing so potentially educate and inform millions of people. The format of short talks, averaging 10 to 18 minutes, given by expert speakers has garnered worldwide interest and attention, and has even sparked community-organized local TEDx events. The TEDx events allow communities to host their own independent TED-like events with a lineup of speakers in front of a live audience.

The TED concept continues to evolve in response to its environment, speakers, audiences, and users, and draws upon TEDx talks from around the world to amass “a large volume of potentially powerful ideas from which to pick the best.”1 As a result of innovations such as TED Talks, educators now have more opportunity to make use of technology to enhance learning. Exposing learners to thought-provoking speakers can ignite discussion, debate, and reflection that continues long after a speaker’s 18 minutes are over. Therefore, the TED community represents one form of online information sharing that can be used for educational purposes.

Workshops on the social determinants of health

Recently, faculty in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto in Ontario have begun to use TED Talks as a springboard for teaching the important concepts of the social determinants of health (SDOHs) to family medicine residents. Social determinants of health are factors that affect health and well-being—the circumstances in which we are born, grow up, live, work, and age. Although these factors might not always directly cause or prevent illness, they are root causes of ill or good health.2 There is increasing evidence supporting the importance of addressing these root causes to improve the health of individual patients, their families, and our communities.

Given the high quality of TED Talks available online, Department of Family and Community Medicine teachers have created a series of workshops focused on SDOHs as they relate to primary care. It should be mentioned that other forms of online media could have been used as well; however, the authors chose TED Talks owing to their familiarity with these talks and the range of topics available. Workshops cover topics such as income and social status, housing, food security, gender and women’s health, healthy child development and reduction of child mortality, social support networks and social inclusion, education and literacy, HIV and AIDS, culture, and physical environments.

While not all learners will gravitate toward standard SDOH lectures, integrating TED Talks into the SDOH curriculum might invigorate the discussion and enhance the value of this subject matter for learners. Each workshop uses a TED talk as a launching point for focused discussion. The workshops are created to make use of Prezi presentation software, which is an interactive medium that can highlight key concepts grounded in discussion and thought-stimulating activities. While many alternate presentation formats could be used to achieve the same objective, we have developed these workshops using Prezi to optimize and facilitate presenter flexibility and creative freedom during each presentation.

Future applications

In medicine, the vast amount of knowledge and skills required to practise based on principles of best care obliges us to teach our students with the most effective methods possible. The goals of education in medicine are to support and develop highly responsible, caring, and competent physicians with ever expanding roles and responsibilities. Unfortunately, the time available to impart this teaching remains static. Where traditional didactic models might fail as vehicles to convey the growing complexity of health care, we need innovative ways to ensure that knowledge is disseminated efficiently.

The SDOH workshops were disseminated more widely beginning in the fall of 2013 at various University of Toronto family medicine teaching units. These workshops were piloted at 3 sites in 2012 and 2013. Workshops on the model, highlighting its goals and objectives and the vision for future application, were presented at the College of Family Physicians of Canada’s Family Medicine Forums in November 2012 and 2013. The 2013 session was entitled “Using TED Talks to teach social determinants of health.” A concept presentation will be given at the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Family Medicine Global Health Workshop in September 2014. There is a plan to share these materials in an open-access manner in the future as a tool for medical education. There will be a critical need to evaluate this innovative educational approach. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, it is hoped that this creative teaching format can indeed be demonstrated to be worth spreading.

Footnotes

  • This article has been peer reviewed.

  • Cet article se trouve aussi en français à la page 788.

  • Competing interests

    None declared

  • The opinions expressed in commentaries are those of the authors. Publication does not imply endorsement by the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

  • Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada

References

  1. 1.↵
    1. Merchant N
    . When TED lost control of its crowd. Harvard Business Review 2013 Apr.
  2. 2.↵
    British Medical Association. Social determinants of health—what doctors can do. London, UK: British Medical Association; 2011.
PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

Canadian Family Physician: 60 (9)
Canadian Family Physician
Vol. 60, Issue 9
1 Sep 2014
  • Table of Contents
  • About the Cover
  • Index by author
Print
Download PDF
Article Alerts
Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on The College of Family Physicians of Canada.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Using TED Talks to teach social determinants of health
(Your Name) has sent you a message from The College of Family Physicians of Canada
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the The College of Family Physicians of Canada web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Using TED Talks to teach social determinants of health
Eileen Nicolle, Emmanuelle Britton, Praseedha Janakiram, Pierre-Marc Robichaud
Canadian Family Physician Sep 2014, 60 (9) 777-778;

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Respond to this article
Share
Using TED Talks to teach social determinants of health
Eileen Nicolle, Emmanuelle Britton, Praseedha Janakiram, Pierre-Marc Robichaud
Canadian Family Physician Sep 2014, 60 (9) 777-778;
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Ideas worth spreading
    • Workshops on the social determinants of health
    • Future applications
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Info & Metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF

Related Articles

  • Utilisation des conférences TED pour enseigner les déterminants sociaux de la santé
  • PubMed
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • Benefits of TED Talks
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

  • Challenges with new treatments for Alzheimer disease
  • Merging clinical practice guidelines for chronic pain with insights from noninvasive neuroimaging
  • Collaborative mental health care
Show more Commentary

Similar Articles

Navigate

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
  • Collections - English
  • Collections - Française

For Authors

  • Authors and Reviewers
  • Submit a Manuscript
  • Permissions
  • Terms of Use

General Information

  • About CFP
  • About the CFPC
  • Advertisers
  • Careers & Locums
  • Editorial Advisory Board
  • Subscribers

Journal Services

  • Email Alerts
  • Twitter
  • RSS Feeds

Copyright © 2023 by The College of Family Physicians of Canada

Powered by HighWire