Welcome to 2020’s first newsletter from the Coalition for Life-Course Immunisation (CLCI).

7 Steps to Life-Course Vaccination - Manifesto for Europe: 

The CLCI is pleased to launch its manifesto. It is now available on the CLCI website along with our first position paper; we urge you to circulate them within your networks and on your own websites.

Registration Update
Having recently successfully registered in the United Kingdom we are now registering in Belgium. CLCI has secured a registration address at the offices of the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) in Brussels, as well as the occasional use of office space. We have already taken advantage of their office and thank them enormously for their hospitality.

The CLCI UK bank account is with the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) bank. After some initial difficulties with the transfer of international funds, we now have money arriving in our account. Following the bank account opening, CLCI completed registration with the UK tax authorities in October.  This ensures CLCI is not liable for income or corporation tax on donations and allows it to claim Gift Aid (25%) on UK donations.

Trustees
At the Trustees’ meeting in August 2019, Samantha Nye volunteered to act as Vice Chair. At the same meeting Carlo Signorelli kindly volunteered to provide financial oversight for CLCI whilst we seek a voluntary Treasurer.
 
During 2019, Gary Finnegan, Samantha Nye, Daphne Holt and Malcolm Taylor formed a communications sub-group. So far, they have focussed on how CLCI should disseminate its manifestos and position papers so that they reach the widest relevant audience.

Retirement and re-election
The constitution of CLCI requires that one third of Trustees retire each year. In December 2019, Daphné Holt, Malcolm Taylor and Samantha Nye retired, offered themselves for re-election, and were re-elected at the AGM.

AGM and EiP focus group
The 2019 AGM was held on 6^th December at the Excellence in Paediatrics Conference in Copenhagen. It was attended by nine members and two non-voting supporters. The minutes of the meeting have been circulated in January 2020 and are available on our website in the Members’ area.  If you have any difficulty accessing the Members’ area please email the General Secretary.

In addition to the AGM the members enjoyed two full days of roundtables and focus groups on vaccination. Daphné and Malcolm also spoke with a group of newly qualified public health doctors from Italy who had been introduced to the conference by CLCI members Carlo Signorelli and Anna Odone.

At the AGM we were pleased to welcome two new members to CLCI – Professor Paulo Bonanni from Italy and Professor Javier Diez-Domingo from Spain. The bios of Paulo and Javier will be posted on the website shortly.
 
We are also pleased to announce that the 2020 AGM will be held in Amsterdam in the first week of December.

Website
The CLCI website is now live and we have uploaded some further content so please take a look. We would like to feature European news and continue to invite members to send any news and activities they would like us to share. Please contact the General Secretary with any content you would like included.

Active Citizenship Network
CLCI is collaborating on a project with our newest supporter, the Active Citizenship Network (ACN), called “European active citizens for vaccines promotion 2019 - Improve the awareness on vaccine benefit across Europe”.
 
The Chair and the General Secretary of CLCI attended a meeting of the Steering Committee early in the year. Gary Finnegan and Malcolm Taylor subsequently contributed to the translation of the ACN video which will be released shortly.  There will be a link to it on the website.

Balmis Institute Roundtable
Francisco Gimenez-Sanchez invited CLCI to organise a roundtable discussion at the Balmis Institute conference in Almeria in November and it was a great success. Anna Odone, Vytas Usonis and Daphné Holt gave presentations while Malcolm Taylor moderated.

The videos of the roundtable can be found here and the slides for each of the presentations here.

Looking Forward

Now that CLCI is a registered organisation we must start to look beyond 2020 to 2021-2 and at the possibility of seeking core funding. Over the next few months we will be preparing a mission statement that explains what CLCI stands for, where we hope to be in two years’ time and how we plan to achieve our goals. We would be very grateful for your participation in this activity so please send any ideas that you have to the Chair.

Message from the Chair: News from Malcolm

Our General Secretary Malcolm Taylor is in hospital after a fall while on a walking holiday in Scotland. I am sure you will joining me in wishing him a speedy recovery.