May 8, 2019
AVAC is pleased to announce the next offering of its global Good Participatory Practice Online Training Course! This course offering will run May 29 through August 2, 2019.
Click here to apply. Completed applications are due by May 24th.
The Good Participatory Practice (GPP) Online Course is designed for research implementers, specifically those individuals directly responsible for community engagement in a research or implementation context. (To learn more about GPP, click here.) Learners develop practical GPP plans for their context and those who complete the course receive a GPP Implementer Certificate.
For this upcoming course offering, applicants are encouraged to enroll in pairs as team members who have complementary research and implementation expertise, since clinical trials and rollout of new products have a natural relationship with regard to community outreach and stakeholder engagement. An ideal partnership would include someone from the public health or service delivery arm of an institution and someone currently or about to be working on a clinical trial, but all partnerships will be considered.
The pairing is not required for participation but encouraged. We won’t match those who do not have partners but will try to balance the cohort with a mix of those working on clinical trials and those on service delivery and/or public health projects. Over the years of implementing the GPP Online Course, AVAC has learned that the participants who have worked in teams have enhanced their learning experience by having a thought partner to with whom to brainstorm and advocate for tangible changes that can be made at the institution level.
To date, over 150 learners have been certified through AVAC’s GPP Online Course, and nearly all of them have ranked their learning experience as “excellent” or “very good”. The majority report significant gains in their ability to “develop measurable objectives” and “self-efficacy to identify stakeholders”. These metrics indicate learners are better equipped to measure engagement and identify stakeholders in the community who can help advance engagement goals.
Today, a robust pipeline of products are moving through testing, not only for HIV prevention, but for tuberculosis, emerging pathogens, and other disease areas where GPP is being applied. As products progress through trial phases and beyond, important lessons are being learned about translating research into rollout. GPP can play an important role, not only in preparing communities for results and future implementation, but also in incorporating lessons from rollout back into the clinical trials process. By enrolling the pairs as described, we hope that this course can start to add to that body of knowledge.
Join these learners to strengthen your GPP implementation and to add to this growing global community of practice!
For more information about the program, please contact Jessica Salzwedel (gpponlinecourse@avac.org).