Organization: World Health Organization
Registration deadline: 08 Oct 2017
Starting date: 16 Oct 2017
Ending date: 01 Dec 2017
A digital course for health practitioners involved in immunization planning to develop their capacity to include the GRISP transformative investments
The World Health Organization (WHO) invites applications from all health practitioners involved with immunization planning at national and sub-national levels to join the second cohort of the GRISP Scholar course.
- This online course starts 16 October and finishes 1 December 2017.
- Applications will be accepted until 8 October 2017.
- During the week of 9–13 October 2017, applicants will be invited to attend an online briefing and complete pre-course orientation.
Please whitelist grisp@learning.foundation and noreply@cgscholar.com. Course-related communication (including the notification of WHO’s decision) will arrive via both of these e-mails. It is important that you ensure that these messages are recognized as legitimate messages.
Who should apply
We encourage National and sub-national EPI management staff, WHO/UNICEF country and regional staff, in-country partner organization staff and consultants supporting national immunization planning processes to apply.
Context for this course
The purpose of the new Global Routine Immunization Strategies and Practices (GRISP) guidelines is to reassert routine immunization as the foundation for sustained decreases in morbidity and mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases across the lifecycle of all individuals. Its focus is on the GRISP transformative investments, i.e. on areas of intervention that will change an entire immunization programme when implemented.
Once challenges and barriers to the programme have been identified and the appropriate strategies to address these challenges have been found, activities have to be concretely planned within the operational annual EPI plan. This course will take participants through the process of identifying the challenges, finding the right transformative investment and strategies, and incorporating these into the annual EPI plan for implementation.
Additional information about the GRISP and this course may be found on the WHO web site:
http://www.who.int/immunization/programmes_systems/policies_strategies/GRISP/en/
Added value of this course
The course provides accelerated learning on the use of the latest WHO guidelines on routine immunization.
The main course project is intended to be directly applicable to the development of an annual EPI plan.
Participants will work both in small groups (peer review) and as a community to compare and share best practices in immunization planning with fellow practitioners from all over the world and global experts from WHO.
WHO will issue a certificate of participation to those who successfully complete all of the requirements of the course (draft and revised case study, three peer reviews, and participation in both online community dialogue and weekly live sessions).
Learning objectives
- Relate the recommendations and approach of the GRISP guidelines to your specific context.
- Define the problem and prioritize recommendations to select a suggested action that could have the greatest impact on the current state in your country.
- Identify best practices in the suggested action through literature review and dialogue with your peers.
- Select transformative investments and areas of action that are likely to transform your national immunization programme and the work of global partners.
- Adapt innovative ways to implement transformative investments in your country context.
- Describe how to take transformative investments from strategy to implementation.
- Compare and share best practices with practitioners from all over the world, drawing on global expertise from WHO.
What will you do in this course
- Complete successive writing assignments to develop a set of transformative investment activities for inclusion in immunization planning.
- Peer review the drafts of other participants to learn from and provide constructive inputs.
- Revise your draft activities, drawing on what you learned from peer review, resources and ongoing dialogue in the course.
- Contribute at least once a week to community dialogue and live online sessions.
Prerequisites and requirements
Applicants are responsible for ensuring that they are able to meet the following requirements:
- Information technology: Participants will need to have access to a reliable Internet connection and a standard browser less than five years old (Safari, Chrome, or Firefox). You will need to access the course web site on a regular basis.
- GRISP guidelines: Participants should download and familiarize themselves with these guidelines.
- Experience and expertise: As an immunization professional, you should be familiar with both global guidance and recommendations, including the Global Vaccine Action Plan 2011–2020 (GVAP) and your specific context (Region, Sub-Region or Country).
- Access to EPI data: For the country(ies) you support, you will be expected to have access to routine administrative coverage data, vaccine usage data, assessment reports for programme reviews, specialized assessments such as PIEs (Post-Introduction Evaluation), EVMs (Effective Vaccine Management) assessments and HW KAPs (Health Worker Knowledge Attitudes and Practices).
- Languages: The working language will be English. Participants are encouraged to allot extra time if they are not fully proficient writing in English.
Schedule and workload
Participants should expect to
- attend a pre-course briefing on Tuesday 10 October 2017 at 14h00 and complete orientation tasks.
- participate remotely in the weekly, one-hour discussion group that will meet online every Tuesday at 14h00 Geneva (UTC+2). Recordings of these sessions will be made available for those who are unable to attend for legitimate reasons.
- dedicate at least 3-5 hours per week to course work during 6 weeks (at least 30-45 minutes per working day).
- All of the course tasks must be completed by a specific deadline, but each participant may work at any time within them (except for the weekly discussion group which is at a fixed day and time each week).
Certification
WHO will issue a certificate of participation to those who successfully complete all of the requirements of the course (draft and revised case study, three peer reviews, and participation in both community dialogue and weekly classroom sessions).
Please send any enquiries about this course to grisp@learning.foundation.
How to register:
We encourage National and sub-national EPI management staff, WHO/UNICEF country and regional staff, in-country partner organization staff and consultants supporting national immunization planning processes to apply. Click here to apply…
Applications will be accepted until 8 October 2017.