Faculty Guide for ABA Educational Resources

This article details the various types of faculty necessary to plan and present education throughout the ABA. Individuals may use these definitions to begin the education development for live events and enduring online content.

Several types of faculty members contribute to ABA education. Below is a list of faculty types.

All faculty members must submit a disclosure of relevant financial relationships.

Faculty Types

Course Directors: The main people (usually two) in charge of developing an education session. Course directors develop the session agenda and choose the speakers (for education forums) and moderators (for correlative sessions).

Speakers: Presenters at ABA Annual Conference education forums, sunrise symposia, or correlative sessions, as well as those who present enduring online educational content.

SMEs: Subject matter experts contributing content to in-person or enduring online educational resources.

Poster Presenters: Those who present their scientific posters at the ABA Annual Conference.

Moderators: Those who moderate or run correlative sessions at the ABA Annual Conference.

Poster Moderators: Those who review and score posters at the ABA Annual Conference

Disclosures of Relevant Financial Relationships

Accredited continuing education must protect learners from commercial bias and marketing.

All decisions related to the planning, faculty selection, delivery, and evaluation of accredited education must be made without any influence or involvement from the owners and employees of an ineligible company.

Names or contact information of learners must not be shared with any ineligible company or its agents without the explicit consent of the individual learner

Therefore, all course directors, speakers, and moderators must disclose any relevant financial relationships (RFRs) to the ABA, which then provides them to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME).

An Ineligible company is one whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.

Examples of financial relationships include employee, researcher, consultant, advisor, speaker, independent contractor (including contracted research), royalties or patent beneficiary, executive role, and ownership interest. Individual stocks and stock options should be disclosed; diversified mutual funds do not need to be disclosed.