Stanford Continuing Studies 2009-10: Stanford Mini Med School

Stanford University Continuing Studies is offering a three-quarter course titled, "Stanford Mini Med School" for the upcoming year. It looks like a really great effort by the med school to make our curriculum more accessible to a larger audience outside of the campus, and sort of falls within the vision of allowing people to become active participants in their health.

It looks like only fall quarter info is available:

"The Dynamics of Human Health"

This Fall, the Stanford Mini Med School will get started with a journey inside human biology. We will start by familiarizing ourselves with the world of very small things. We will take a close look at DNA, stem cells, and microbes, and see how these and other small players form the building blocks of the human body. This will allow us to understand how human organs develop (and can also regenerate), how our nervous and immune systems work, and how diseases can afflict us. From there, the course will move beyond the individual and take a more global view of health. How do pandemics take shape? How does the environment affect our collective health? And how can we finally implement a healthcare system that makes sense for our nation?

Awesome faculty who I know who are involved are Sherry Wren (Surgery), Abraham Verghese (Medicine), Julie Theriot (Microbiology/Immunology). Sounds like a really nice interdisciplinary approach for "medicine from scratch."