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Call for applications for the First Cohort
WHO Scholar Level 2 certification course on Comprehensive Vaccine-Preventable Disease Surveillance
The World Health Organization (WHO) invites applications for the first cohort of the WHO Scholar Level 2 certification course on Comprehensive Vaccine-Preventable Disease (VPD) Surveillance.
This advanced course will focus on the implementation of the global strategy for comprehensive VPD surveillance at country level to ensure that country VPD surveillance systems are comprehensive, high-quality, and sustainable to detect and confirm cases and outbreaks and generate usable information to guide public health response and programme planning.
Application deadline
Who Should apply?
This interactive online course is targeted at:
- VPD surveillance and immunization programme staff working in Ministries of Health (MOH) at national and sub-national levels, and
- Staff working at WHO country offices, partner agencies, and universities that provide technical support to country MOH VPD surveillance and immunization programmes.
The course is most suitable for those directly supporting national VPD surveillance and immunization programme management and planning.
Laboratory staff whose tasks include VPD testing are also encouraged to apply.
Prior completion of the WHO Scholar Level 1 certification course on Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) is desirable for this Level 2 course.
As a health professional working at the national or sub-national level, your role is critical in securing a high-quality and sustainable surveillance system for vaccine-preventable diseases and in implementing the global strategy for comprehensive VPD surveillance in your local context.
What is comprehensive VPD surveillance?
Comprehensive VPD surveillance is defined as the country, regional and global systems that meet the WHO-recommended standards for surveillance of priority VPDs (as defined by each country), with integration of surveillance functions across VPDs and other diseases wherever possible.
The vision of the global strategy for comprehensive VPD surveillance is: “All countries have comprehensive, high-quality, sustainable VPD surveillance systems, supported by strong laboratory systems, that detect and confirm cases and outbreaks and generate usable information to guide outbreak prevention and response, immunization programme optimization, and vaccination policymaking to decrease the burden of VPDs as efficiently, effectively, and equitably as possible.”
The word “comprehensive” is used to indicate that surveillance for all priority VPDs, whatever form surveillance takes, should be considered an integral part of a country’s overall surveillance and vaccine programme strategy. This may require more robust implementation and potentially adding VPDs and geographic areas not currently included in national or sentinel VPD surveillance systems. Within a comprehensive VPD surveillance strategy, emphasis is placed on laboratory confirmation of disease, case-based data collection and reporting, epidemiological investigation, data management and analysis, and the visualization and use of VPD surveillance data for routine programme monitoring, optimization, decision-making and response.
What is the purpose of the global strategy for comprehensive VPD surveillance?
The purpose of the global strategy for comprehensive VPD surveillance is to address the current gaps and limitations of VPD surveillance in all countries. It does this by providing guiding principles for countries:
- to establish, maintain and strengthen VPD surveillance,
- to use surveillance data for public health action, and
- to provide a monitoring and evaluation framework that countries and other stakeholders can use to assess the overall performance of VPD surveillance to further invest in strengthening it.
Course schedule overview
The course combines both live group discussions and offline individual activities. Active participation is required for the entire duration on the course.
Time required for the individual activities are indicative. The detailed course programme will be sent to selected participants before the start of the course.
Three sessions where everyone will be together, online.
- Monday 11 July 2022, 9h-12h Geneva time
Session 1 (3 hours): Understand the global strategy for Comprehensive VPD surveillance, share best practices, innovations and challenges with conducting VPD surveillance especially related to integration of support functions and resourcing across diseases - Tuesday 12 July 2022, 9h-12h Geneva time
Session 2 (3 hours): Work in groups to conduct a rapid review of country VPD surveillance systems and develop a national implementation plan of comprehensive VPD surveillance - Tuesday 19 July 2022, 9h-10h30 Geneva time
Session 5 (90 minutes): Presentation of implementation plans by participants with group discussion and feedback
Three sessions where everyone works offline on their country (or sub-national) implementation plan
- Wednesday 13 July to Thursday 14 July 2022
Sessions 3 (4-6 hours): Develop country implementation plan for comprehensive VPD surveillance. This is an offline individual activity, with an optional daily live peer support session. - Friday 15 July to Monday 18 July 2022
Session 4 (3-4 hours): Peer review to provide feedback to other participants’ implementation plans. This is an offline individual activity, with an optional daily live peer support session. - Wednesday 20 to Friday 22 July 2022
Session 6 (2-4 hours): Improve your country implementation plan based on feedback received from peers and facilitators.
What you will gain
- Work on a project that is intended to be suitable for implementation in your country (or sub-national) context, contribute to the strengthening of your country’s VPD surveillance system, inform the development of your country’s implementation plan of comprehensive VPD surveillance.
- Connect with a global community committed to strengthening VPD surveillance systems in their country.
- Learn from your peers through both formal and informal dialogue as well as giving and receiving feedback.
- Compare and share best practices, innovations, and challenges with peers and global experts.
- Earn a WHO Scholar certificate to validate that you have learned about the global strategy for comprehensive VPD surveillance and understand how to implement it in your country.
- Develop your digital skills to collaborate and learn remotely.
Learning objectives
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
- Describe the IA2030 Global Strategy on Comprehensive Vaccine-Preventable Disease Surveillance’s five objectives and four guiding principles
- Perform a critical review of your country (or sub-national) VPD surveillance especially related to integration of support functions and resourcing across diseases
- Develop your country implementation plan of comprehensive VPD surveillance including through innovative ways
- Share best practices, innovations, and challenges with your country’s VPD surveillance systems with professionals working in other countries.
What you will do
- Critically review your country’s VPD surveillance systems.
- Develop an implementation plan based on your own context of work.
- Peer review implementation plans developed by colleagues from all over the world.
- Present your review findings, implementation plan, and recommendations to your peers, giving and receiving feedback about your work.
- Share your experience to deepen your comprehension of key concepts.
Resources and prerequisites
The main resource for this course is the IA2030 Global Strategy on Comprehensive Vaccine-Preventable Disease Surveillance
This document complements and extends the high-level global immunization strategy, Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030): A Global Strategy to Leave No One Behind. It summarizes a strategy for VPD surveillance for the period 2021–2030 and is of relevance to the following IA2030 Strategic Priorities:
- Strategic Priority 1: Immunization Programmes for Primary Health Care / Universal Health Coverage (Key area of focus: Vaccine-preventable disease surveillance)
- Strategic Priority 5: Outbreaks & Emergencies (Key area of focus: Integrated surveillance)
Other resources and prerequisites for the course include:
- Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030): Participants should download and familiarize themselves with the IA2030 (click here to download...).
- Access to documents or reports on the participants’ country VPD surveillance system, laboratory system, and/or immunization programme: Examples of documents or reports that participants should compile include immunization programme review reports, surveillance review reports, standard operating procedures (SOP)/guidelines/other documents that describe your surveillance systems, other reports, presentations, manuscript references, guidelines, websites. Examples of documents that relate to the laboratory system include organigram of the laboratory/institute; SOP for specimen transportation; accreditation, External Quality Assessment and Quality Control documents; licensing requirements, and standards for data reporting.
Technical requirements
Applicants are responsible for ensuring that they are able to meet the following requirements.
- Information technology: You will need to access web-based digital platforms, watch or download videos, download and upload documents, and use Zoom for live sessions. Participants need to have access to a reliable Internet connection and a standards-based browser less than two years old (Firefox, Safari, or Chrome). Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge users will be asked to use a standards-based browser for the course. Mobile-only users will need to use Mobile Chrome in desktop mode when working on their course projects.
- Internet access: Specific guidance will be provided to those who have bandwidth limitations, intermittent access, or may suffer from disruption of their connection to the Internet.
- Language: The course is being offered twice, once in French and once in English. Participants are encouraged to schedule extra time if they are not fully proficient writing in the course language.
What are the goals of this WHO Scholar Level 2 certification course?
This WHO Scholar Course – in line with Immunization Agenda 2030 – explicitly aims to ‘close the loop” by more actively engaging global immunization and surveillance leaders in listening and learning from participants. This WHO Scholar Level 2 certification course aims to:
- Foster awareness and application of the IA2030 Global Strategy on Comprehensive VPD Surveillance, related activities and documents at all levels of the immunization and surveillance programmes, and
- Help you integrate these strategies and priorities into your immunization and surveillance context to achieve national, regional and global goals
How you will shape WHO’s work through your participation in this course
- Immunization Agenda 2030 is intended to be tailored to your country’s context, using cooperative design from the bottom up, and adaptable to changing needs and new, emergent challenges.
- WHO and global partners are committed to learning from you through this course. In fact, when you complete the application, we will ask you to document a specific challenge that you face in your work.
- Your challenges will be shared with technical experts to inform their work, as well as to help adapt the course to fit your needs.
Certification
Upon successful completion of the course and following validation of your coursework by the course team and subject matter experts at WHO headquarters, you will receive a certificate of participation from the World Health Organization. Each certificate is valid for a duration of three years. Certificate holders agree to show upon request a portfolio of their work that includes the project(s) produced in Scholar.
Confidentiality and data protection
This initiative uses the Privacy by Design approach. This means that we think of privacy implication before offering a course, we don’t ask for information we don't need, and we protect the information you share. We take pride in treating our learners’ privacy the way we would like to be treated, as individuals. We will treat your information with respect.
Honor code
The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Scholar communities are devoted to learning and the creation of knowledge. We view integrity as the basis for meaningful collaboration. We thus hold honesty – in the representation of our work and in our interactions – as the foundation of our community.
Members of each Scholar community commit themselves to producing course work of integrity – that is, work that adheres to the scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources, appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and conclusions. Cheating on assignments or projects, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of immunization.
Scholar course participants are required to adhere to a strict Honor Code. Violation of the Honor Code may result in removal from the course, loss of certification (including prior Scholar certificates), and notification of your employer.
Research and evaluation
The Geneva Learning Foundation and its partners may review projects developed by Scholars and may consider some of them for use in their communication, advocacy and training effort. You will be asked for consent in your application.
Learners may also be invited to participate in research and evaluation by the Geneva Learning Foundation and its partners. Participation in this research is completely voluntary, and you may stop taking part at any time. In cases where learners do not consent, no learner data will be collected. Participation or non-participation will have no effect on assessment of your performance in the course or your present or future relationship with the organizations involved.
