GloPID-R 2023 Highlights and Season’s Greetings

As we come to the end of 2023, I want to highlight the very constructive discussions we had during the annual General Assembly in São Paulo in October, the subsequent endorsement of the new Governance and the prospect of Board elections to be held in January. The discussions and decisions involved in reshaping the GloPID-R governance framework and transitioning to a new Board for our funders’ alliance required energy and investment, and we thank all those who contributed to this important process. Very soon, a new Board will be in place and a Scientific Advisory Group will likely be formed in the year ahead. We can look forward to a year of revitalized activity and fresh momentum in 2024.

I strongly encourage all members to take a few minutes to vote online, between January 2 and 19, for the members of your new Board. Election results will be announced the week commencing January 29. You will receive an email with a personal code to log on and cast your vote. Please contact Hans-Eckhardt Hagen or Tri Le with any questions.

I want to thank all of you for trusting me and the current Board to lead GloPID-R through very tough times over the past three years. It was a privilege and honor to work with all of you and to see GloPID-R grow and come out of the acute pandemic period stronger than before.

As many of you prepare for an end-of-the-year break, I hope you will enjoy reading about our important accomplishments in 2023. Sincere thanks to all our members, observers, and partners for their contributions to GloPID-R in the past, present and future. I wish each of you a joyous and healthy holiday season.

Charu Kaushic
GloPID-R Chair

• 34 members
• 8 observers

• General Assembly – October 24-26, 2023 São Paulo, Brazil
• Africa Hub Launch – August 22-23, 2023 Cape Town, South Africa
• Coordinated Funding Roundtable – September 4, 2023 online
• 2nd Asia-Pacific Conference – September 12-13, 2023 Seoul, South Korea

Regional Hubs

The Africa Hub kick-off conference in Cape Town, hosted by SAMRC, was a resounding success. Assisted by the Central Secretariat, the Africa Hub Secretariat is currently developing a draft work program and preparing its next steps. The Asia-Pacific Hub, with the support of the Research & Policy Team, contributed to a publication on regional mapping that appeared in BMJ Global Health. Preparatory work continues for the establishment of a GloPID-R Regional Hub in Latin America.

Pandemic PACT Research Tracker

Pandemic PACT (Pandemic Preparedness: Analytical Capacity and funding Tracking program) is a GloPID-R program that receives support from multiple funders. User testing of the Pandemic PACT Grant Tracker is being organized prior to the program’s official launch in early 2024. This powerful new tool to track data about research funding for a wide range of diseases with pandemic potential will be available on the GloPID-R website. Work to establish a Rapid Research Needs Appraisals (RRNAs) platform within Pandemic PACT is also ongoing. This will rapidly synthesize available published knowledge to inform research prioritization.

Funders Living Roadmap

Published on May 4, 2023 the GloPID-R Funders Living Roadmap for Clinical Trial Coordination provides guidance for funders to strengthen clinical trial coordination. A commentary piece in The Lancet was published alongside its release. The GloPID-R Clinical Trials Working Group has now shifted its focus toward supporting members in the implementation of the Roadmap, first by mapping funders’ policies and practices against the Roadmap’s actions. This work will inform the focus of the working group in the new year. The working group has also been collaborating closely with the WHO as it implements the World Health Assembly 75.8 Resolution on strengthening clinical trials. Research & Policy Team member Isabel Foster participated in a regional consultation on clinical trials hosted by WHO AFRO (Lusaka, Zambia) and Alice Norton was invited to speak at the WHO Global Clinical Trials Forum (Geneva, Switzerland).

Coordinated Funding Mechanism

Many GloPID-R members have shown an interest in being involved in this initiative. Future coordinated research calls will be designed to complement existing funding plans and focus on areas of unmet need as a means to accomplish what individual funders alone cannot do. In 2023 the Implementation Group met regularly and drafted a first coordinated call proposal, which was then discussed at the General Assembly. A coordinated funding platform named was created and a first meeting of the program was held in December 2023.

Inaugural International Pandemic Sciences Conference – July 10-11, 2023

The GloPID-R Research & Policy Team, which is hosted within the Policy and Practice Research Group at the PSI, presented their research projects.

3rd Africa Health Research & Innovation Funders Forum – August 25-27, 2023

Hans Hagen, Alice Norton, and Emilia Antonio attended this event held in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Grand Challenges Meeting in Dakar – October 8-11, 2023

Hans Hagen attended this meeting in Senegal.

World Health Summit 2023 – October 15-17, 2023

The annual summit in Berlin was attended by Thuy Minh Tri Le (Gee) and Hans Hagen.

OECD panel discussion of the Report on Measuring Governments’ R&D Funding Response to COVID-19 – October 16, 2023

Alice Norton was invited to sit on the panel discussing the OECD Report, which draws heavily on the COVID-19 Research Project Tracker by UKCDR & GloPID-R.

WHO Global Clinical Trials Forum – November 22, 2023

Alice Norton was invited to speak about our Funders Living Roadmap for Clinical Trial Coordination.

As anticipated, the Mérieux Foundation in Lyon, France, is ending its participation in the Secretariat at the end of December. Richard Vaux, our current Head of Operations, will then be leaving the Secretariat. As GloPID-R’s living memory, Richard can recall every annual General Assembly in astonishing detail. He has been instrumental to the smooth running of the Secretariat since it was initiated in 2015 and hosted by the Mérieux Foundation. The team will also greatly miss Jason Soffe, who has been invaluable to showcasing GloPID-R’s achievements as our Digital Communications Manager.

Our new GloPID-R Project Assistant, Thuy Minh Tri Le (Gee), has been learning to move mountains since she joined the Secretariat in September. A warm welcome to Margit Baring, the new Operations Manager, who will be joining Thuy Minh Tri Le and Hans Hagen in Berlin as of January 2024. The Charité Center for Global Health in Berlin is the host of the GloPID-R Secretariat for the three-year grant period 2023-2025.