During the 2019 AfHEA conference that took place in Accra, Ghana, John Hopkins University (JHU) and the international Decisions Support Initiative (iDSI) organized a pre-conference capacity building workshop on “Applied Health Economics Using Examples from Immunization”. This workshop was part of JHU’s teaching vaccine economics everywhere (TVEE) project. The platform for the workshop was deemed highly appropriate and supportive and the workshop itself was highly subscribed and successful. The success of the partnership for the workshop and the persistent demand to expand it culminated into two different related projects:

A survey on the teaching of health economics in Africa was developed and launched by iDSI in partnership with AfHEA, iHEA, and the School of Economics of University of Cape Town. AfHEA facilitated the dissemination of this survey on its various platforms including the AfHEA website and Ahpernet forum, as well as in reviewing the survey and making technical contributions to it. The survey results are expected to help to map out areas of need and gaps in teaching health economics to inform the expansion drive. AfHEA is currently contributing to the survey analysis and draft report is being finalized.

Secondly, Johns Hopkins University expanded the teaching of vaccine economics to public health faculty in Africa with the hope that the faculty would introduce the courses in their respective institutions. TVEE have since launched online courses which AfHEA assisted in disseminating to its network members.