The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 17 (SDG-17), which seeks to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development highlights the important role that Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) play in global health sustainability and security. Pandemics, like COVID-19, present unique global health challenges that, by necessity, are catalyzing make-shift and long-term PPPs to remediate unprecedented burdens on the healthcare infrastructure and on morbidity and mortality.

As COVID-19 is now infecting people in countries across the world, the field of global public health is prompted to analyze what PPP-generated global health practices have worked in the past to respond to epidemics and pandemics, and whether or not those response frameworks inform current and future pandemic responses.

The problems pandemics create may be universal (e.g., in terms of pathways to transmission) but also context-specific, as different countries have different capacities to address these challenges, as well as different priorities. As PPPs are now being forged upon the need to respond to COVID-19, there is also an opportunity to define what recent PPP and private sector innovations may serve to inform future handlings of pandemics affecting low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high income countries (HICs), as well as what innovations might currently exist in certain global regions that could be transferred to new interventions that may combat COVID-19. Such an analysis may promote information-sharing in live time to combat COVID-19, as well as inform best practices for future outbreaks.

As the world draws closer through the COVID-19 crisis, and those in HICs now face equipment, space, and staffing shortages often seen in LMICs, there is a need to analyze PPP pandemic responses through the larger framework of how they may serve the needs of the global public good, to extend needed support to all countries and people. In a similar vein, the COVID-19 crisis has revealed that PPP responses to pandemics also need to define, adapt, and mechanize a broader global health security agenda that builds global and country-level capacity to address future pandemics.

To explore these topics, this workshop has invited some of the world’s top experts in pandemic response, who will: (1) review best practices and critical actions from past PPP epidemic and pandemic responses to determine if past response frameworks have applications for the current COVID-19 pandemic; (2) explore PPP innovations and models that are addressing COVID-19 in country settings; (3) examine PPP pandemic responses that increase and help navigate the distribution of global public goods; and (4) discuss PPP pandemic responses that enable the development of a broader global health security agenda.

Through the sharing of critical actions and best practices from past and present pandemic responses, the workshop will both inform PPPs that are currently combating COVID-19 and analyze guidance for future PPP pandemic responses.

REGISTER HERE