The American Association of Latino Orthopaedic Surgeons: Our History, Achievements, and Future Goals.

ABSTRACT: The mission of the American Association of Latino Orthopaedic Surgeons (AALOS) is to provide collegiality, advancement, education, and social justice for Latino orthopaedic surgeons and the minority populations they represent. We strive to enhance diversity within the field of orthopaedic surgery by increasing the visibility of AALOS, highlighting its core focus, and emphasizing its mission. The purposes of this article are to discuss the need for this organization and highlight its history and future goals. As AALOS recently celebrated its 15-year anniversary, we are excited to continue advancing the field of orthopaedic surgery and improving our patients' care.

Best Practices for Developing International Academic Partnerships in Orthopaedics.

ABSTRACT: Traumatic and nontraumatic orthopaedic conditions are major contributors to global morbidity and account for the majority of life-years lived with disability worldwide. Additionally, the burden of musculoskeletal injuries has increased substantially over the past 3 decades. Unfortunately, in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), access to orthopaedic care is limited, leading to a disproportionate burden of disease. The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery has emphasized the urgent need for unified international commitment and research collaboration to achieve universal access to safe and affordable surgical care. However, conducting high-quality orthopaedic research in LMICs remains challenging as a result of disparities in training, access to resources, infrastructure, and equipment availability. Partnerships between high-income countries (HICs) and LMICs have emerged in recent decades as an effective approach to combatting some of these challenges. These partnerships aim to bridge the gaps by facilitating collaborative research and knowledge exchange. The establishment of successful partnerships requires a collaborative and reciprocal approach that starts with a clear understanding of mutual research aims and the availability of resources. Despite the potential benefits, various factors can make establishing such partnerships difficult. However, these partnerships can have a substantial impact in delivering quality orthopaedic education and research training, thus improving access to care in resource-limited environments. This paper represents the collaborative effort of multiple international academic orthopaedic surgeons with extensive experience in HIC-LMIC partnerships. Our aims were to outline the best practices for conducting orthopaedic research within these relationships and to provide guidance for future successful collaborations.

Novel e-learning platform for orthopaedic training in LMICs: A descriptive review of the IGOT portal.

Background: While e-learning has been written about extensively within the context of orthopaedics in the United States, there are few articles describing e-learning initiatives geared towards low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Institute for Global Orthopaedics and Traumatology (IGOT) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) developed the IGOT Learning Portal to meet this need. Methods: The IGOT Learning Portal was designed to address knowledge gaps in patient care by increasing access to high-quality orthopaedic education for surgeons and trainees worldwide. It offers 10 distinct, asynchronous courses, which are divided into a modular format. Course enrollment is free and accessible to any surgeon or trainee with a web-browsing capable device and internet connection. Results: There are more than 2700 registered users and 300 active learners enrolled in IGOT Learning Portal courses. The Surgical Management and Reconstructive Training (SMART) program is the most commonly taken course. Learners represent 32 different countries across six continents. The IGOT portal also has surgical videos available on YouTube. The IGOT Portal YouTube channel has over 2000 subscribers and over 143,000 total views. Conclusions: The IGOT Learning Portal is an innovative approach to address the global disparity in orthopaedic trauma care by improving access to high-quality surgical education for surgeons and trainees both in the US and internationally. The development of an interactive online forum may be a beneficial addition to the Portal. Future directions include assessing content retention, participant interaction, and expanding existing content to other orthopaedic subspecialties.