It brought together 72 international participants among which 42 attending in person at Les Pensières Center for Global Health and 30 online. They represented leaders and partners of vaccinology courses around the globe.
32 courses were represented to review the global collaboration in advanced vaccinology education in the context of the health crisis, to help courses address challenges in priority areas, and to facilitate activities and information exchange. The aim was also to discuss how collaboration between these different vaccinology courses could be formalized.
Several lectures and discussions provided an opportunity to reflect on and discuss the evolution of vaccinology training since 2018. Further to the COVID-19 pandemic, new vaccine training needs have been identified, one of the major changes being the massive implementation of virtual trainings.
Participants shared good practices in vaccine education, in terms of training needs assessment, training content adjustment, course accreditation, adaptation to students, networking of distance learning participants and use of digital tools to access educational resources and collaboration.
Facilitation of cascade trainings and refresher courses was the subject of very prolific exchanges as well as the way to share information and resources between courses.
As a follow-up to this workshop, participants agreed to expand the common online e-Portal on the ADVAC website created after the first workshop in 2018, bringing together information on the main vaccinology courses around the world.
The global collaboration could be formalized with the creation of a steering committee and a secretariat to enhance the credibility and the visibility of the various courses.