ARVAC - Alumni course

Who can attend?

This new course is targeting health care experts which have already been trained in one of the ICAVT vaccinology courses (Alumni).

If you haven't been trained yet in vaccinology, we advise you to visit the ICAVT Vaccinology Trainings catalogue to identify courses you can apply to.

Dates 2024

The exact same online course is offered twice to allow participants for all over the world to attend:

Morning Week (10 AM - 12:40 PM CET - Geneva Time): 4-6 June 2024 (for people located in Asia, Oceania, Europe and Africa)
Aternoon Week (3 PM - 5:40 PM CET, Geneva Time): 11-13 June 2024 (for people located in the Americas, Europe and Africa)

Format

Each week, 3 sessions of a half-day (3-4 hours) will be offered to the alumni.
Each session of 3-4 hours will contain 3 to 4 lectures of 35 minutes each.
Each lecture will consist of a 25-minutes lecture and 10 minutes live discussion between the alumni and the lecturer, animated by the chair of the session (an ICAVT member)
Alumni and ICAVT partners can ask question using the video or the chat

Accreditation

The course has received accreditation from the the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (EACCME® event reference LEE/2024/00621 (Week 1: 4-6 June 2024) and LEE/2024/00622 (Week 2: 11-13 June 2024).

If granted, you will receive up to 5.5 credits for continuing medical education if you attend the training. The course organizer (ADVAC at the University of Geneva) will check the attendance during the course to be able to deliver the Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits adequately. Participants in the Course should be able to convert these credits through their respective professional bodies.

Context

ICAVT is a partnership of 35 vaccinology courses worldwide. Those trainings have a different history, background, content and audiences but they all have trained, over the years, altogether, thousands of experts in the area of vaccinology.

However, alumni from those various trainings have constantly requested to attend again the trainings they attended initially or other ones to update their knowledge as the vaccinology area is in constant evolution and changes thanks to a strong research pipeline and a rich and diverse implementation community.

Instead of allowing alumni to attend the trainings they already completed again or attend another course and therefore reduce the number of new experts trained, ICAVT members have agreed to jointly develop a single common refresher course dedicated to their alumni. This course will provide annually the alumni from various background with lectures on the last updates on immunization and on new topics key for their daily activities.

Course objectives

The course aims at providing a refresher course and latest updates on immunization and vaccines to the alumni of the various existing advanced vaccinology training courses worldwide.

The alumni refresher vaccinology course will provide updates in the following key areas of vaccinology: immunology, vaccine development, clinical trials, regulatory processes, vaccine-specific issues including new vaccines, vaccination strategies and policies, programme implementation, humanitarian emergencies, social, economic, political and ethical issues, financing, and communications. It will also provide lectures on new areas of the discipline uncovered by previous courses.