Enabling evidence to tackle everyday diseases to mitigate another pandemic

Abstract

The next emergent novel pathogen is likely to occur where the ability to undertake health research and collect life-saving data is lacking. Without embedded and ongoing research activities in place spotting and stopping a new threat is not possible, thereby enabling undetected infection and unchecked transmission within a community. Without local existing capabilities to collect such data delay is catastrophic. Fundamental goals in pandemic preparedness should be to stop an outbreak before it becomes a pandemic. This requires immediate action from teams already in place with the right skills, this could be readily achieved if we shift our thinking and enable research capabilities to be present in every healthcare setting. Addressing fundamental gaps in health research capacity and equity could tackle this and then we would be better prepared, globally.

Keywords: health research capacity; capacity strengthening; pandemic preparedness; health research; outbreaks; global research equity.

Figure 1.. The COVID Research Implementation Hub: Infographic used to direct research team to protocols, tools, training and guidance during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic across all the different types of studies that were needed.