New report highlights advances in global health research and development

February 26, 2013 by PATH

Digital and data transformation
Global Health Technologies Coalition offers recommendations to maximize global health investments
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The 2013 report offers recommendations for US policymakers’ continued investment in global health. Photo: PATH/Gabe Bienczycki.

The Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC) has released its fourth annual policy report, documenting US leadership in driving global health research and development to save lives around the world.

Renewing US Leadership: Policies to Advance Global Health Research highlights recent scientific and policy achievements that have spurred the development of important health innovations such as vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics.

It also offers recommendations for how US policymakers can continue making critical investments to produce the next generation of global health tools—proposals that are especially timely given the looming US budget cuts that threaten decades of work to develop tools against major killers, including AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Support for research and development

The report makes recommendations in two areas: advancing global health research and maximizing US investments in research and development.

Advancing global health research:

  • Prevent sequestration and develop a long-term budget solution that protects and—where possible—increases funding for global health product development.
  • Sustain robust investments in the discovery, development, and delivery of new tools for public health worldwide.

Maximizing US investments:

  • Develop a strategy to coordinate US global health research and product development efforts.
  • Strengthen the capacity of the US Food and Drug Administration in global health by: creating an office of neglected diseases; building stronger partnerships with global regulatory stakeholders; ensuring it can review health products for all neglected diseases; taking steps to increase transparency by reporting to Congress on its neglected disease activities; and strengthening internal capacity on global health.
  • Collaborate with other governments and donors worldwide on incentives, innovative financing, and research and development funding coordination, particularly at the upcoming World Health Assembly negotiations on a proposed global health research and development framework.

The GHTC is housed at PATH and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The coalition includes nearly 40 organizations advocating for research and development of tools to prevent, diagnose, and treat global diseases so health solutions are available when populations need them.

More information

Posted February 26, 2013.