Improving Infectious Disease Innovation Governance

Although the threat posed by coronaviruses has been known for a long time, the world was ill-prepared for Covid19. Prior to the pandemic significant amounts of funding had been allocated to research related to coronaviruses. But progress toward a drug therapy or vaccine was limited before the pandemic began because the systems we rely upon to encourage innovation are tied closely to financial rewards. Unless the financial rewards are predictable, in other words, the interest in developing a drug or vaccine to address an infectious disease like Covid19 will be weak outside of a public health emergency. To improve the world's preparedness against infectious diseases, we therefore need to rethink how we develop drugs and vaccines-we need to change the laws, policies, and practices that we use to drive innovation in order to make the world less vulnerable to future public health emergencies. And we also need to ensure that there are no barriers to sharing knowledge and producing an important intervention like a vaccine in quantities sufficient to meet the world's needs when an infectious disease outbreak occurs. Building upon ten years of research about important public health interventions like the Ebola vaccine that was developed in a Canadian government laboratory, as a Chair in Applied Public Health my goal is to improve the system of infectious disease innovation. I will study how drug and vaccine innovations are developed in the real world, identify practical solutions that can sustain infectious disease research outside of outbreaks, and train the next generation of infectious disease scientists to ensure that their research improves our security and remains broadly accessible to people who are in need, both within Canada and beyond its borders.