Two Years of Pandemic PACT: Advancing Global Funding Tracking Transparency and Research Coordination
March 2026
Two years since the launch of the Pandemic PACT programme, the programme continues to support evidence-informed decision making for epidemic and pandemic research coordination through tracking of global funding and evidence. From influencing policy to collaborating directly with decision-makers, here is a snapshot of key research outputs, activities, and milestones from the past year.
Key Achievements of the Year:
- Integrating data on 19 additional pathogens into the Pandemic PACT Grant Funding Tracker.
- Two policy roadmap dashboards launched: the 100 Days Mission dashboard and the WHO Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence Hub dashboard.
- Pandemic PACT’s work has contributed to high-level policy and funding decisions relating to pandemic and epidemic preparedness and response.
- The programme responded to six infectious disease outbreaks with interactive data visualisations and regularly updated policy brief reports.
Year Two In Review
May 2025
In May 2025, Pandemic PACT marked the major milestone of the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement at the World Health Assembly in Geneva with an Expert Comment blogpost and BMJ editorial from Prof Alice Norton, the Principal Investigator of Pandemic PACT. Prof Norton highlighted the critical importance of coordinated pandemic research and the need for investment in R&D and cited data from Pandemic PACT in the editorial.
June 2025
The following month, the Pandemic PACT team presented at the MERS Global Community Webinar, sharing findings from a Rapid Research Needs Appraisal (RRNA) on MERS and outlining key risk factors and mitigation strategies for MERS‑CoV spillover, in collaboration with the WHO.
Our research was featured in both oral and poster presentations, delivered by several members of the Pandemic PACT team, at the International Pandemic Sciences Conference in Oxford. Prof Norton also chaired a session at the conference discussing intersections of science and policy.
July 2025
Following the announcement of the US funding cuts to global health research, the Pandemic PACT team presented an analysis titled ‘Mapping the Exposure of Global Pandemic Sciences Research to US Funding Contraction and Cuts’ at a GloPID-R membership meeting in July 2025, highlighting the implications of funding shifts for the international research landscape. An associated publication is currently under peer review.
Pandemic PACT was asked to map epidemic and pandemic research investments made by UK‑based funding organisations against the UK Government’s Health and Care Research and Development Framework for pandemic preparedness, prevention, and response, which was made publicly available in July 2025. This work built on earlier engagement undertaken during the framework’s development phase. The framework was developed by cross‑government research funders and other stakeholders and outlines strategic themes and priority areas for research funding before, during, and after an outbreak. Findings from this mapping exercise were shared with the UKCDR Epidemics Preparedness and Response Group (a partnership of funders and stakeholders focused on improving research coordination during outbreaks and outbreak preparedness) to support their discussions on enhancing UK and global outbreak preparedness and response efforts.
August 2025
The grant funding tracker interactive data dashboards and datasets were updated to include all high-priority pathogens and pathogen families identified by WHO. This expansion to include 19 additional high-risk pathogens reflects Pandemic PACT programme’s commitment to supporting enhanced global research funding coordination for emerging infectious disease threats, through transparency in research funding flows. The update followed the 2024 Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where the WHO called for a broader, forward-looking approach to pandemic preparedness in its report ‘Scientific Framework For Epidemic And Pandemic Research Preparedness’. You can learn more about the priority pathogen update here.
In the same month, Prof Norton was invited to present Pandemic PACT’s findings on the mpox research landscape to policy and decision-makers at an Africa CDC meeting.
September 2025
In September, Pandemic PACT published a policy brief and outbreak page on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During outbreaks, Pandemic PACT’s outbreak pages are frequently updated with funding data (sourced more frequently to an provide up-to-date overview of the research landscape) and regular reports on the outbreaks.
The Pandemic PACT team contributed to Exercise PEGASUS, a national pandemic preparedness exercise led by the UK Department of Health and Social Care with the UK Health Security Agency. As the largest pandemic simulation in UK history, it brought together government and non‑government stakeholders. Pandemic PACT provided rapid research insights during the exercise, demonstrating the programme’s value in supporting evidence-based national preparedness efforts.
October 2025
The team published an article entitled ‘Living mapping review of global research funding for infectious diseases with a pandemic potential – Pandemic PACT Grant Tracker’ in Wellcome Open Research. This baseline analysis of Pandemic PACT funding tracking data highlighted gaps in global research investment and aims to support more coordinated decision-making to strengthen pandemic preparedness worldwide.
November 2025
Pandemic PACT launched the 100 Days Mission Policy Roadmap Dashboard in November, the first in a series of interactive tools connecting research funding data to major policy roadmaps. This publicly accessible dashboard was developed in collaboration with the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat (IPPS) and allows users to explore investments aimed at accelerating the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines in the first 100 days of an emerging health threat, supporting the goals of the IPPS.
December 2025
In this month, a journal article ‘Evidence on mpox clade Ia and clade Ib: A rapid research needs appraisal’ was published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. The evidence gaps identified in this paper can inform coordinated research strategies to generate evidence for clinical and public health responses to improve mpox outcomes.
January 2026
Early in 2026, the 100 Days Mission 'Implementation Report Progress in 2025 & Priorities for 2026’ highlighted the significance of Pandemic PACT’s Grant Tracker tool for mapping investments across pre-clinical and clinical research, capacity strengthening, and data systems, providing insight into progress and persistent gaps in pandemic preparedness.
A journal article titled ‘Funding the priorities of the influenza vaccines research and development roadmap: an evaluation of global investment’ was published in the Science Direct (Vaccine) journal. Led by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) and undertaken in collaboration with the Pandemic PACT Team, this work mapped global investments into influenza virus vaccines R&D from 2020 - 2024 to priorities and key milestones identified in the Influenza Vaccines Research and Development (R&D) Roadmap. The roadmap is a strategic planning tool for coordinating R&D funding and aimed at improving seasonal influenza vaccines and developing broadly protective or universal influenza vaccines.
February 2026
In collaboration with the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, the programme launched the Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence Research funding Tracker, its second policy roadmap dashboard. This tool visualises funding across eight research priority themes. This dashboard and its freely available underlying dataset supports enhanced global capabilities for preventing, detecting, and responding to health threats.
Looking Forward
In the third year of Pandemic PACT, we look forward to achieving the following milestones:
- Launch of the Rapid Research Needs Appraisals dashboard on our website.
- The publication of the first update to our Living Mapping Review of the Pandemic PACT dataset and protocol update.
- The publication of disease-specific research papers, research funding contraction and pandemic and epidemic intelligence.
- A clinical trials visualisation dashboard.
- Continuing to respond and pivot to priority outbreaks.
You can stay up-to-date with our current publications here and subscribe to the GloPID-R newsletter to get updates about Pandemic PACT activities and other news here.