The Defense Health Agency J-7 Continuing Education Program Office (DHA J-7 CEPO) is the accredited continuing education provider for health care professionals who support/care for U.S. active duty service members, reservists, military veterans, and their families. The guidance on this page and within the CE Activity Development Guidance Document is provided to assist with developing continuing education (CE)/continuing medical education (CME) and Certificate of Attendance (CA) educational activities. DHA J-7 CEPO assesses, reviews, and awards CE/CME credits for eligible educational activities.

PLEASE NOTE: CEPO is unable to provide CE/CME accreditation support for an activity that is simultaneously receiving CE/CME accreditation support with another CE/CME provider.

The CE Activity Development Guidance Document can be downloaded here.

CE/CME Accreditation

CE/CME for health care professionals consists of educational activities which serve to maintain, develop, or increase the knowledge, skills, and professional performance and relationships that a health care professional uses to provide services for patients, the public, or the profession. The content of CE/CME is the body of knowledge and skills generally recognized and accepted by the profession as within the scope of practice.

• CE/CME for health care professionals assist in carrying out their responsibilities more effectively and efficiently.
• Each CE/CME activity should address certain key principles as delineated below. These principles are designed to enhance the awareness, knowledge and skills that a clinician needs to provide quality services to patients.
  • Bridge professional practice gaps
  • Meet educational needs
  • Achieve improved results

Fair Balance

The content or format of a CE/CME activity or its related materials must promote improvements of quality in health care and not a specific proprietary business interest of a commercial interest. A product or service must be presented in a fair and balanced manner with other similar products or services. Presentations must give a balanced view of therapeutic options. Presenting Faculty should use scientific or generic names when referring to products in their educational materials. Should it be necessary to use a trade name, then the trade names of all similar products within a class should be used. Presentations that promote a brand, device, treatment, or trade name over others in a category cannot be accredited for CE/CME.

Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of Interests (COIs) are situations where personal or financial considerations compromise judgment, or where the situation may appear to provide the potential for professional judgment to be compromised. COIs may arise in CE/CME since the potential exists for professional judgment and practice to be biased by an economic interest in, or personal benefit from, professionally related commercial enterprises.

CE/CME Educational Activity Content

Content must be:

• Evidence-based
• Presented without promotion or bias
• No less than 60 minutes in duration
  • This may include a question and answer (Q&A) portion if the CE/CME is a live webinar.

PLEASE NOTE: Detailed instructions on how to create CE/CME Educational Activity Content can be found in the CE Activity Development Guidance Document under the section entitled "CE/CME Material Requirements".

Activity Evaluation

In accordance with accreditation guidelines, learners must complete a post-activity evaluation to earn CE/CME credits. These evaluation questions measure how effective the educational activity was in closing the identified learning gaps, improving competence, performance, and patient care practices. This information enables CE/CME planners to identify successes and shortcomings in the educational activity or barriers to implementing changes that learners experienced in order to address these factors in future CE/CME activities.

Learners will be asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the educational activity in achieving its educational purpose and objectives. Each identified learning objective and faculty/author will be evaluated separately.

PLEASE NOTE: Enduring (also known as Home Study) Activities: For any non J-7 hosted enduring activities, the course content will not be stored within CEPO's CE Management System (CMS). The content must be stored within another source (JKO, Share Point Sites, Relias, milSuite, etc). Learners will be provided instructions on how to complete their posttest and course evaluation within the DHA J-7 CEPO CMS.

CE/CME Events POC Responsibilities

Presenting faculty and content reviewer forms may either be submitted in the CMS by creating individual accounts or the event POC(s) have the option to obtain and submit all required information and forms on behalf of presenting faculty and content reviewers. ALL CE Applications and CE/CME materials must be submitted at least 45 calendar days prior to the date of the activity. If submitting CE/CME materials for a conference that will occur for two or more days then ALL CE/CME materials are due no later than 60 calendar days prior to the first day of the activity.

Methods for submitting CE/CME materials:

• All CE/CME materials can be submitted by following the instructions on how to create a Zip file within the CE Activity Application.
• For large file submission, i.e., multi-day conference submissions with several faculty documents, several PPTX's, please submit presentation slides through https://safe.apps.mil (CAC required). If presenting faculty does not have a Common Access Card (CAC), please request that DHA, J-7, CEPO sends a "Request a Drop-off" via Department of Defense (DOD) SAFE. Files are automatically deleted from DOD SAFE seven days following upload.

PLEASE NOTE: POC Responsibilities are outlined in the CE Activity Development Guidance Document under the section entitled, "CE/CME Events POC Responsibilities."

DHA Public Affairs Office Review and Approval

The Military Health System (MHS) U.S. government public affairs officer's review is focused on identifying and prohibiting the following: an implied US Government endorsement, branding, copyright violations, etc. When health-related topics are discussed, many times a review by MHS subject-matter experts is required to ensure the briefings align with MHS/DHA policy/procedures.

For Public Release means anything that is intended or may be released in the public domain (such as a publicly accessible website, a webinar, etc.).

PLEASE NOTE: Instructions on how to submit educational content for PAO review and approval can be found in the CE Activity Development Guidance Document under the section entitled, "CE/CME Material Requirements, subsection: Obtain DHA Public Affairs Office approval before public release."

508 Compliance

Electronic information should be created with people of all abilities and disabilities in mind. Presentations are required to be 508 compliant.

PLEASE NOTE: A complete section detailing how to obtain 508 compliance training and requirements can be found in the CE Activity Development Guidance Document under the section entitled, "508 Compliance."