USC Radiology Global Health Initiatives

RAD-AID Chapter at USC

Robert D. Harris, MD, MPH, has been an academic radiologist for 34 years at several institutions, most recently at USC since 2019. He is very interested in global radiology and ultrasound, the latter lending itself to low resource settings, especially. He has done global medical work in Haiti, Serbia, Vietnam, West Africa, and more recently, East Africa, where he spent the year 2015-16 and part of 2017 working for the grant Human Resources for Health, educating radiologists in Rwanda to train upcoming radiologists in that country, and teaching physicians about basic imaging principles and techniques.

At USC Keck, he is the director of the revitalized USC RAD-AID chapter and has helped to fashion a remote teaching program with the Tanzanian radiology residency at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Arusha, TZ. Weekly lectures are being given by USC faculty and fellows/residents and are well received by the 7 new residents in Tanzania. The goal is to start in-country teaching/visits in 2022, but this, of course, is reliant on COVID-19 travel restrictions. Other members of the department (neuroradiology, specifically) are reading remote CT scans from Port au Prince, Haiti, providing a vital service to the patients there.

Teleradiology in Haiti as an Element of Neuroradiology Fellowship Training

Hospital Bernard Mevs in Port Au Prince is the only tertiary care hospital in Haiti, with a CT scanner and trained CT technologists. At our institution, we partnered USC neuroradiology fellows with USC attending neuroradiologists to interpret neurologic and body CT scans at this hospital in Haiti. Interpretation of CT scans occurs through a web-based PACS set up by a non-profit organization. The fellows draft reports for neurologic and occasionally body CT examinations, which are then edited by the attending neuroradiologists at our institution. The reports are uploaded, with critical findings discussed with the clinical teams.

Comments from past participating fellows:

• “This was an excellent experience to understand how the availability of resources affects care, in both good and bad ways. I also found it to be a rewarding experience that was eye-opening as to how severe limitations can be.”

• “The exercise provides opportunities to understand the operational aspects of teleradiology in a rural setting. Cases show unique pathologies not commonly seen in urban settings. Follow-up strategies have to be tailored to work around limitations in healthcare system resources.”

• “Informative, meaningful, with a wide range of cases”