Accelerated public health and biomedical research on priority public health objectives through collaboration between US NIH and WHO

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Abstract The World Health Organization (WHO) is the global lead agency in health matters. It fulfils a dual mandate of developing global norms and standards in health, and in providing technical assistance to member countries. More recently, WHO’s action in health emergencies has been highlighted as an important additional priority. Health research is an important component across all areas of work, and its role in research has recently been re-affirmed by the World Health Assembly. To achieve its objectives related to research, WHO maintains effective collaboration with governmental and other research organizations throughout the world, as evidenced by the network of WHO Collaborating Centres. WHO addresses a research portfolio with broad complementarity to the goals of NIH specialized institutes, covering communicable and non- communicable diseases, endemic, epidemic as well as emerging health threats. NIH as global leader in biomedical research, it is a key partner for WHO in advancing the knowledge base and in the development of new medicinal interventions. This proposal aims at enhancing collaboration between the two agencies to increase relevance, efficiency and reach of the research in support of the most pressing public health needs. This will be achieved by combining unique innovative approaches of both Organizations, building on NIH’s excellence in medical and biomedical research and its access to a vast research infrastructure, and on WHO’s global reach, its normative role and excellence in relation to implementation sciences. The collaboration will make use of WHO’s broad research programme experience, its capacity to convene and set agendas, and to develop consensus through transparent and inclusive consultative processes, with consideration of all relevant regions and communities, and taking stock of WHO’s decentralized structure. Prior work has demonstrated the power of this approach. Specific aims are dual, and cover collaborative action in the area of emerging issues in public health that require investments in basic, translational and implementation research; and a specific aims to promote work on arboviral diseases from basic to translational and implementation related research. There is significant room for expansion of collaborative activities in support of both institutions shared goals and objectives.