University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) McGovern RAD-AID Chapter in Morocco

The UTHealth McGovern RAD-AID Chapter has been active in Morocco since 2016 with annual trips, providing lectures and workshops, assessing needs for capacity building, and participating in remote clinical missions in collaboration with local physicians. Since the pandemic started, a necessary shift to remote collaboration resulted in the activities below.

• Delivered continuing education to 50–70 practicing radiologists in Morocco through monthly webinars covering topics in all subspecialties.
• Organized two interactive workshops with Moroccan and McGovern radiology residents on the topics of Emergencies From Head to Toe (summer 2021) and Musculoskeletal Imaging (winter 2022). Moderated by faculty members, residents presented didactic lectures and case discussions.
• Collaborated with Moroccan radiology training programs throughout the country, including Oujda, Tangiers, Agadir, Fes, Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakech, to deliver our most exciting new pilot program, Radiology Residency Curriculum, to 56 Moroccan radiology residents selected based on English proficiency test results after an interview with a member of the UT Houston RAD-AID team.

The Radiology Residency Curriculum is designed to include all topics necessary to meet graduate medical education requirements and the American Board of Radiology core exam, including cardiothoracic, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, musculoskeletal, neuroradiology, pediatrics, breast imaging and interventional radiology as well as noninterpretive skills such as professionalism, ethics and quality and safety.

UT Houston and MD Anderson radiology faculty volunteers are now delivering a Spring 2022 Radiology Residency Curriculum via virtual lecture series on the topics listed above every Saturday through June 2022. Each session consists of three hours of lecture time as well as a test before and after the lectures to assess longitudinal knowledge growth in this resident cohort and efficacy of the program. Midpoint and final assessments will also be used for evaluation. In addition to attending a minimum number of these weekly lectures, Moroccan residents are expected to complete a scholarly project to receive a certificate of completion.

While the latest Radiology Residency Curriculum signifies a relatively comprehensive, virtual inaugural program, we plan to learn from the feedback and adjust our program to fit the needs of the Moroccan residents. We aim to design our next program on a longer timeline to cover each subject in more depth, leading to a more comprehensive radiology education program.

We are grateful for the opportunity to work with several Moroccan radiology trainees and look forward to continuing to pursue the RAD-AID mission statement — to improve and optimize access to medical imaging and radiology in low- and middle-resource regions of the world for increasing radiology’s contribution to global health initiatives and patient care.