Research & Development

Purpose

Launched in 2021, the R&D Task Force develops tools to help Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) countries and donors make a clear case for the linkage between R&D capacity-building and health security targets, sets clear roadmaps for strengthening R&D capacity-building, and holds dialogues that help identify and highlight key bottlenecks for decision-makers. The R&D Task Force also actively coordinates with other relevant Action Packages, such as those on antimicrobial resistance, zoonotic diseases, biosafety & biosecurity, legal preparedness, laboratory systems, and sustainable finance, as well as other GHSA Task Forces to ensure that R&D of medical countermeasures is integrated into those forums.

R&D assessment tool

The Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC), which serves as the secretariat of the R&D Task Force, has developed an R&D capacity assessment tool for GHSA members. This tool, which was built after a careful landscape of the current health security-related evaluation and metrics ecosystem and several dialogues with experts and other stakeholders, is meant to serve as a voluntary self-assessment of R&D capacity for countries. Ultimately, the aim is to help drive R&D capacity-building investments, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, and eventually, weave these metrics into a future version of the Joint External Evaluation.

Primary Ongoing Activities

A report tracking the progress from the pilot year of the Task Force can be found here. Over the coming year, the R&D Task Force plans to:  

  • Clarify the links between R&D capacity-building efforts and health security, including with the International Health Regulations (IHR)/Joint External Evaluation (JEE) and to scope or focus the Task Force’s work.
  • Strengthen assessment of country and regional research capacity, identify gaps, and highlight indicators and metrics that can track progress for GHSA members as local R&D capabilities are enhanced.
  • Encourage the identification and implementation of new actions from public- and private-sector GHSA partners to strengthen R&D for health security.
  • Collaborate with GHSA Action Packages and other Task Forces to ensure that R&D for medical countermeasures is more formally integrated into those discussions and look for opportunities to connect with external partners to break down silos.
  • Deepen international collaboration on health security R&D by convening relevant actors to identify barriers to communication and collaboration and develop road maps for improvement, including in relation to financing, data-sharing, and the coordination of targeted research calls.
  • Find ways to connect the work of the R&D Task Force to the sustainable financing dialogues and new mechanisms like the Pandemic Fund.
Presentation (2/27/2025): Laboratory Capacity Building with IAEA 
The February 2025 meeting of the Task Force on R&D featured speakers from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who provided an overview of the agency’s ongoing efforts to strengthen laboratory response capacity to endemic and novel zoonotic threats. You can see the presentation materials here.