Accredited providers are responsible for ensuring that education is separate from marketing by ineligible companies—including advertising, sales, exhibits, and promotion—and from non-accredited education offered in conjunction with accredited continuing education.

 1. Arrangements to allow ineligible companies to market or exhibit in association with accredited education must not:

  a. Influence any decisions related to education planning, delivery, and evaluation.

  b. Interfere with the presentation of the education.
  c. Be a condition of the provision of financial or in-kind support from ineligible companies for education.

 2. The accredited provider must ensure that learners can easily distinguish between accredited education and other activities.

  a. Live continuing education activities: Marketing, exhibits, and non-accredited education developed by or with influence from an ineligible company or with planners or faculty with unmitigated financial relationships must not occur in the educational space within 30 minutes before or after an accredited education activity. Activities that are part of the event but are not accredited for continuing education must be clearly labelled and communicated as such.

  b. Print, online, or digital continuing education activities: Learners must not be presented with marketing while engaged in the accredited education activity. Learners must be able to engage with the accredited education without having to click through, watch, listen to, or be presented with product promotions or product-specific advertisements.

  c. Educational materials that are part of accredited education (such as slides, abstracts, handouts, evaluation mechanisms, or disclosure of information) must not contain any marketing produced by or for an ineligible company, including corporate or product logos, trade names, or product group messages, context. Surreptitious or subliminal advertising is not allowed.

  d. Accrediting bodies require separating education from all promotional activities, materials and messages. Many providers create a print or text-based document that goes along with an activity and provides information supplementary to the educational content - like reproductions of slides, graphics or other handouts. These documents, in print or electronic, are an integral part of the education and cannot have any advertising, corporate logo, trade name or product-group message of an ineligible company associated with them. Information distributed about accredited education that does not include educational content, such as schedules and logistical information, may include marketing by or for an ineligible company.

 3. Ineligible companies may not provide learners access to or distribute accredited education. 

Reference:
Standard 5: Manage Ancillary Activities Offered in Conjunction with Accredited Continuing Education | ACCME