BMC Medicine publishes GloPID-R Commentary ‘Preparing for a pandemic: highlighting themes for research funding and practice – perspectives from the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R)’

The GloPID-R commentary ‘Preparing for a pandemic: highlighting themes for research funding and practice – perspectives from the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R)’ was published in BMC Medicine on September 8, 2020.

In the commentary, the authors¹ underline how important the recommendations identified by the participants at the GloPID-R Frontiers meeting last December have become in the current COVID-19 pandemic.  This experience confirms that, to ensure a rapid, coordinated and effective research response to epidemics, a strong and continued preparedness engagement from all stakeholders is essential.

Six preparedness themes for research funding and practice are set out in the article:

• Research cohorts are valuable tools for building pandemic research responses
• Research capacity and activity mapping are essential to facilitate collaboration and improve targeting of resources
• Research collaboration especially between clinical trial networks and cohorts is essential to improve research outcomes
• Sustainability of funding and research capacity during inter-epidemic periods is key to ensure quality research can be initiated rapidly for epidemics and pandemics
• Rapid research and funding systems and rapid data sharing are needed to facilitate knowledge generation to improve practice within epidemics and pandemics
• Ethics and social science need to be core to broader epidemic, pandemic and research response activities.

The authors go on to highlight the relevant practice and ongoing priorities which have been put into action during the COVID-19 response. They point out that in order to improve health outcomes, multidisciplinary research structures, regulatory functions, funding partnerships and trust must be built and maintained within the global health community during inter-epidemic periods. Further knowledge, collaboration and coordination are critical for research on the COVID-19 pandemic and to prepare for future outbreaks.

This commentary builds on the principles highlighted in ‘Strengthening the global effort on COVID-19 research’ published in The Lancet in July this year.

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¹Alice Norton, Louise Sigfrid, Adeniyi Aderoba, Naima Nasir, Peter G. Bannister, Shelui Collinson, James Lee, Geneviève Boily-Larouche, Josephine P. Golding, Evelyn Depoortere, Gail Carson, Barbara Kerstiëns & Yazdan Yazdanpanah