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The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Center for Human Nutrition, Room W2041, 615 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21215
Nutrition is a module of the CD-ROM series Topics in International Health, published by the Wellcome Trust in partnership with CAB International, a not-for-profit media company. The nutrition module focuses on nutritional deficiencies, including malnutrition and vitamin A, iron, and iodine deficiencies (each in a separate chapter); nutritional assessment; maternal and child health; and diet and chronic diseases. Four chapters are devoted to malnutrition, including an overview, epidemiology, prevention, and treatment.
The program is arranged in 3 sections: tutorials, which contain the subject matter; a photo gallery; and a glossary of terms. Each tutorial consists of a sequence of 10–50 screens, each including a picture or diagram and a sidebar with information, usually in bulleted format. Some text may be hot-linked to additional information (usually as a pop-up balloon or a new full screen) and related sections are listed at the bottom of each screen. The content of the tutorials is very good. The authors managed to compress the essential information into a few bulleted texts in each frame.
At the end of each section there is a friendly quiz that allows users to assess their learning stage and revisit topics as needed. The quizzes are useful and entertaining: many questions require moving boxes with data to the correct place in a table or matching captions to photographs.
The photo gallery is a compilation of >1000 photographs, each with a caption and brief comment. Although many of the pictures are relevant, there are many trivial ones as well, depicting people in line buying groceries, landscapes of agricultural lands, and so on. Keyword and topic searches are possible, and images can be tagged, grouped, and printed, but not copied to any other WINDOWS application.
Although the program is compatible with the WINDOWS operating system, it bypasses the WINDOWS system kernel. Thus, when the program is launched it takes control of the screen and all WINDOWS functionality is cancelled. The clipboard is disabled, as are all WINDOWS system services menus. Multitasking is still possible if the other programs are started before this one. You can then move between programs using the Alt-Tab keys. The program is optimized for SVGA (800 x 600) graphics resolution but will run at higher resolution in a smaller window. My test e-mail question to the help desk in London received a prompt and efficient response.
In summary, this is a well-organized review of the main nutritional deficiencies in developing countries. The information is accurate and relevant and the navigation tools are easy to use. However, instructors interested in tapping this material for teaching presentations should be aware of the rigid user interface and the lack of basic WINDOWS tools for moving information between applications.