CANCHID the ListServ is a joint service of CUCHID (Canadian University
Consortium on Health in Development) and the Distributed Knowledge Project's
offices in the Centre for Health Studies (YCHS) at York University. It's
primary focus is "health in international development", which is taken to
mean -in practice- health in developing countries and health in poor com-
munities where ever they may be.  Although it is formally a service to the
Canadian Health and development community, it is open to subscriptions and
contributions from around the globe. It is three years old and in the past
year has grown from 70 to 190 subscribers, some of those subscribers being
institutional memberships which reflect CANCHID to greater numbers of
people.
 
CANCHID will report on its progress and its future plans at the annual meetings
of CUCHID, to be held in Ottawa, Canada just prior to the November 13-15 First
Canadian Conference in International Health (CCIH). CCIH was organized by the
Canadian Society for International Health and CUCHID, with support from the
International Development Research Centre (IDRC: Ottawa) and the Pan American
Health Organization (PAHO: Washington). For further information on CCIH, CSIH,
or CUCHID as organizations contact: Marc Hyndman < [log in to unmask] >
 
It is now certain that CANCHID will be migrating off of its current machine
< @vm1.yorku.ca > before the end of 1995. We will be moving to a UNIX based
fileserver and will be addding Gopher and FTP to the CANCHID services prior
to moving the ListServ itself. We are considering, and will propose to CUCHID,
that CANCHID "partner in" with the consortium of Canadian students groups who
focus on health in international development and (a) provide some services to
them in addition to CANCHID itself, and (b) help nurture their learning and
skills to live and work with one foot in the virtual workspace.
 
With the addition of an FTP site and a Gopher there are considerable new
services that CANCHID, as the CUCHID health informatics initiative, can
undertake. We intend to become a primary source and provider site for some
materials and -along with everyone else- will point our gopher menues to
interesting resources on the networks. What we would like to ask SUBSCRIBERS
and OTHERS now is what sorts of services do they "dream" about as being
someday available on the networks, in the service of health in development.
Please feel free to post thought pieces to CANCHID or shorter ideas directly
to me < [log in to unmask] >.
 
We will have the capacity to mount high (technology) end services but will
try to target the main portion of CANCHID's services so that they can be of
direct use to colleagues and projects resident in developing countries.
 
All suggestions of substance (i.e., those requiring substantial action) will
be used as input for the CUCHID discussions in Ottawa in November.
 
I would like to thank people at IDRC, CSIH, CUCHID, the PHNFlash people at
the World Bank, and the rest of you who have gone out of your way in the
electronic workspace to support the usefulness of CANCHID.
 
                                   Sam Lanfranco, CANCHID ListManager
                                       [log in to unmask]