Disclosures and Conflicts of Interest

Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education require anyone in a position to control the content of an educational activity or involved in the planning of the educational content including faculty, abstract reviewers, paper presenters/authors, planning committee members and the significant others of those mentioned to disclose all relevant financial relationships with commercial interests to the program participants prior to the start of the activity.

AANS Staff will provide you with Disclosure and Mitigation of Conflict of Interest forms.

 

• The disclosure forms must be collected by your organization and returned to the AANS prior to the activity. Please see your meeting’s timeline/checklist for deadlines.
• The second slide of each presentation should indicate the speaker’s disclosure(s).
• Verbal Disclosures:
  • For last-minute replacement speakers, you must get a disclosure from the replacement speaker. In addition, if that person has something to disclose, you must mitigate any conflict of interest by completing the AANS Mitigation of Conflict of Interest form. Lastly, the speaker must verbally disclose to the audience even if he/she has nothing to disclose.
  • If the replacement speaker refuses to disclose or if you cannot mitigate the conflict of interest, then that person cannot be faculty.

 

• Complete a Mitigation of Conflict of Interest form for all individuals who reported a relationship with a commercial interest on their disclosure form. This must be completed by someone other than the individual with the disclosure.
• Send these completed forms to AANS prior to the activity. Please see your meeting’s timeline/checklist for deadlines.
• Refer to the Updated Standards for Managing Conflicts of Interest for further information regarding disclosures and mitigating conflicts of interest.

Failure or refusal to disclose or the inability to satisfactorily mitigate the identified conflict will result in the withdrawal of the invitation to participate.

Disclosure information is divided into two categories: those with financial or other relationships to disclose and those with no significant relationships to disclose.

 

The AANS and (insert name of non-accredited sponsor) control the content and production of this CME activity and attempt to ensure the presentation of balanced, objective information. In accordance with the Standards for for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education established by the ACCME, faculty, abstract reviewers, paper presenters/authors, planning committee members, staff and any others involved in planning the educational content must disclose any relationship they or their co-authors have with ineligible companies which may be related to their content. The ACCME defines "relevant financial relationships" as financial relationships in any amount occurring within the past 24 months that create a conflict of interest.

Those who have disclosed a relationship* with an ineligible company are listed below:

Name	Disclosure	Type of Relationship*
John Smith, MD	ABC Instrumentation	Consultants
Jane Smith, MD	123 Drug Company	Royalty

*Relationship refers to receipt of royalties, consultantship, funding by research grant, receiving honoraria for educational services elsewhere or any other relationship to an ineligible company that provides sufficient reason for disclosure.

Disclose all relevant financial relationships to learners: Disclosure to learners must include each of the following:

1. The names of the individuals with relevant financial relationships.
2. The names of the ineligible companies with which they have relationships.
3. The nature of the relationships.
4. A statement that all relevant financial relationships have been mitigated.

Identify ineligible companies by their name only. Disclosure to learners must not include ineligible companies’ corporate or product logos, trade names, or product group messages.

Disclose absence of relevant financial relationships. Inform learners about planners, faculty, and others in control of content (either individually or as a group) with no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Learners must receive disclosure information, in a format that can be verified at the time of accreditation, before engaging with the accredited education.