Alumna hopes video will help stem the cholera tide

A new animated video about cholera—how people get infected, how it spreads, and how to treat it—is drawing attention from health workers around the globe.

The video’s producer, Deborah Van Dyke, is a nurse practitioner in Vermont, a longtime aid worker for Doctors Without Borders, and a 1993 graduate of Harvard School of Public Health.

Van Dyke hopes the video, as well as others she is producing on newborn care, will benefit health care workers in low-resource settings all over the world. “People learn and remember through visual media,” she said. “It’s a great tool.”

Van Dyke’s videos—some animated, some live—are being produced through her fledgling nonprofit, the Global Health Media Project, and will be available for free via Internet download, viewable on smartphones or other mobile devices, and available on DVD or flash drive.