Hybrid event, co-hosted by DNDi, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, & Friends of the Independent Panel

Participation in-person at DNDi office in Geneva or online

In its May 2021 report, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR) recommended a commons approach to research and development for pandemic tools, and several other groups have explored strategies for the effective sharing of knowledge and technologies for public health purpose.

The aim of this workshop is to start to identify the key elements of a collective framework to organize, finance, and coordinate health innovation by public and private sectors. It will discuss some of the latest economic thinking on collective ownership, explore current examples of managing collective knowledge to develop vaccines and treatments for PPR and help identify areas where policy makers can and should act to increase our collective capabilities for the development and equitable delivery of health technologies for pandemic preparedness and response.

The outcome of these discussions will inform policy discussions towards a new framework for pandemic tools, including a meeting entitled “Advancing a new approach to pandemic tools as common goods”, convened by the former Independent Panel co-chair Rt Hon Helen Clark at the Rockefeller Bellagio Centre on 14-16 February 2023.

Diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics are critical to global pandemic preparedness and response (PPR), and ensuring equitable access to both the underlying knowledge technologies and products requires managing them other than as privately owned commodities.

Building a policy framework to foster more equitable system from R&D to access thus implies a form of collective investment, with shared ownership and clearly defined access rules developed collaboratively around a shared purpose, for instance public health or outbreak and pandemic control. While there has been much discussion around global public goods there has been less focus on how the evolving concepts of “the commons” and “common good approaches” could offer a promising policy framework around which to develop a more sustainable and equitable approach to PPR.

A critical aspect for outbreak response is the ability to rapidly generate effective diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines, and roll them out at the required scale where needed. One way for achieving rapid innovation is through adapting existing technology platforms to new health challenges, in particular for vaccines, or repurposing existing treatments.  Freedom to use knowledge and access to the technical knowhow with technology transfer as needed will be critical to increase our collective capacity to respond to outbreaks anywhere. Enabling such collective capacity could be achieved through a common good approach.

Clinical trials for new drugs or vaccines for PPR must happen as part of the epidemic control response. It is therefore important to establish, in advance, independent and public health-focused trial capacity to swiftly evaluate different interventions in a standardized, comparable, and transparent manner. A commons-based approach that stipulates user and access rights and responsibilities around clinical trial data generated through pre-established clinical trial platforms can enable conditioning access to the platform for developers, including private companies, to binding commitments about the further development, registration, availability, and access.

A collective approach requires the deliberate creation of appropriate legal, policy and institutional frameworks for collective ownership and governance outside the commercial realm, promoting access and user rights rather than exclusive ownership.

Watch recording

Agenda

Moderator: Spring Gombe, Partner and Principal, Public Affairs Practice, Market Access Africa

Introduction and framing

Rt Hon Helen Clark, former co-chair of The Independent Panel

Keynote – Health for All: From a public good to a common good approach

Professor Mariana Mazzucato, Founder and Director, Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), University College London, and Chair of the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All

“Health for All: moving from market fixing public goods to market shaping around the common good”

Initiatives to deliver common goods for health

Respondents:

• Suerie Moon, Co-Director, Global Health Centre, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and DNDi Board Member
• Benjamin Coriat, En Communs, Université Paris Sorbonne
• Sangeeta Shashikant, Legal Advisor, Coordinator Development and Intellectual Property Programme, Third World Network
• Viviana Munoz Tellez, Coordinator, Health, Intellectual Property and Biodiversity Programme (HIPB), South Centre

Discussion

Closing remarks

• Els Torreele, Friends of the Independent Panel and Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
• Luis Pizarro, Executive Director, DNDi