Call For Sessions Guidelines
The African Congress on Sickle Cell Disease is now calling for proposals from the global sickle cell community to help shape a powerful program for the next Congress, which will be held Virtually, on 25th May – 29th May 2021. Don’t miss this opportunity to contribute and demonstrate the power of collective reasoning, pioneering thinking and inspiring initiatives to a diverse regional and global audience.
A set of guidelines, outlined below, have been developed to guide you in submitting a proposal that is aligned with the requirements to fit in the congress program.
Call For Sessions
1. Process and Deadline
- The deadline to submit session proposals is 19th March 2021 at 23:59 WAT
- The Program Committee will evaluate and adjust the submitted proposals to ensure they address an international audience and echo the six program tracks.
- This may include accepting sessions as originally proposed or working with session organizers to combine one or more proposals. All session organizers should be notified on the status of their proposals by Friday 2nd April 2021.
- This Call for sessions Guidelines is an essential tool to help you in the development of your proposal
- The ACSCD 2021 Preliminary Program, including presentation titles and speakers’ names, will be released online on the African Congress on Sickle Cell Disease website from 15th April 2021
2. Session topics
- All session proposals should be submitted through the online system
- Incomplete proposals may not be reviewed
- Each proposed session should be coordinated by a ‘Session organizer’ who will be acting as the main liaison between ACSCD and the session speakers.
- All sessions are 60 minutes
- All sessions will be pre-recorded by the Session organizer under supervision from the ACSCD team
- A proposed topic should be relevant to an issue that is of regional and global interest and not pertinent to one institution only.
- The proposed session should be aligned with at least one of the proposed tracks and should be in line with the Congress overarching theme.
- Within each track description, a number of questions have been raised, which are a helpful guide in putting your proposal together.
- A preference will be given to cross-country, cross-organisation or cross-sector collaboration proposals.
- Session proposals should be submitted in English only.
- Topics already proposed in past ACSCD should demonstrate a significant update and/or progress since the last presentation, and important enough to be presented at the next Congress.
- Session organizers are recommended to incorporate content that will have an aim and determined learning objectives. It is recommended to arm participating delegates with interesting digital materials that they will be able to download and share post-congress.
- Organizers requesting for “Pre-recorded with Live Q&A” Sessions type should especially focus largely at prioritising interaction with the audience and reserve a minimum of 10 minutes within the 60 minutes allocated for “questions and answers”.
- Innovative ideas and evidence based practices that fit in the selected themes are highly encouraged
- The Program Committee will determine the day and time of presentation within the program. The program schedule will be communicated to session organizers.
- When you are filling in your session proposal form, you will be asked to select a preferred ‘Session format’:
- Symposium (lecture format)
- Discussion panel (within this format, it is recommended to minimize the use of Power Point presentations to maximise interactions between the speakers)
- Lounge session (maximising interaction with the audience in an informal setting)
3. Speakers
- Proposed speakers should be aware that their names have been put forward by the session organizer, as well as be available to attend the Congress should the proposal be accepted by the Program Committee.
- A chair/moderator can also take a speaker role within the same session
- Each speaker (or chair) must have a good command of English.
- Each accepted sessions will be granted 4 free registrations (including speakers and chair/moderator)
- To benefit from their complimentary registrations, speakers and chairs need to register online before 30 April 2021. After this deadline, the free registration may not be granted and the applicable registration fee will apply. A specific weblink will be shared for this purpose.
- Each session organizer is in charge of confirming all the speakers in her/his session and scheduling time with moderators and speakers to produce and pre-recording the session in time to be included in the virtual congress platform.
For questions about session proposal submissions,
please contact:
submissions@acscd.org