Basiro joined the OU in 1976 after completing a Doctorate in Tumour Immunology. She pioneered the development of the Health Sciences curriculum at the OU, including the multidisciplinary U205 Health and disease, S320 Infectious disease and most recently, SDK125 Introducing health sciences.
She was Health Sciences Awards Director for several years until 2009, leading the development of the OU’s undergraduate and postgraduate modules and awards in this interdisciplinary area.
In her long OU career she has produced hundreds of multi-media educational materials for distance-learning modules in many areas of public health, including immunology, epidemiology, communicable diseases, sexually transmitted infections and cancers.
Basiro is an expert in distance learning pedagogy, recognised by an OU Teaching Award in 2010. From 2009 to 2011, she was seconded to the OU’s Health Education and Training (HEAT) programme for Africa, as its Deputy Director (Ethiopia), developing training materials and leading intensive curriculum design and writing workshops with 57 Ethiopian health experts and around a dozen OU colleagues.
Together they produced 13 HEAT modules, which are already being studied by over 1,000 of Ethiopia’s rural Health Extension Workers, on key areas of health promotion and disease prevention, including antenatal care, labour and delivery, environmental health, family planning, nutrition, immunization, communicable and non-communicable diseases and mental health. In 2012 another 5,000 Ethiopian students will study these modules, with further cohorts of 3,000 expected annually thereafter.
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Dr Basiro Davey
