Metrics for Pandemic Preparedness

National Academy of Medicine Workshop and Global Monitoring Report

In 2017-18, the Harvard Global Health Institute led the development of a comprehensive framework for Global Monitoring of Disease Outbreak Preparedness. The report summary on this effort reflects the combined expertise of over fifty public health professionals from institutions around the world who gathered in Washington, D.C. in April 2017 at the U.S. National Academies of Medicine. The result of this effort is a robust, evidence-based monitoring framework structured along four key domains , reflecting a multi-sectoral, “whole-of-society” approach to preparedness.

WHA Independent Monitoring 

In a paper published in The BMJ in May 2018, HGHI called for robust, sustainable, and independent monitoring of disease outbreak preparedness to reduce the human and economic costs associated with epidemics and to prevent minor outbreaks from becoming regional epidemics. We highlight the persistent cycle of panic and neglect characterizing infectious disease outbreaks, one that is both costly and unpredictable. The 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa alone cost $3.6 billion to contain and World Health Organization (WHO) officials estimate that the current DRC Ebola outbreak will cost $26 million over the next three months to quell.