Pandemics & other health emergencies
In planning for ESN-CA’s contributions to ESIC’s proposed pandemic and other health emergencies ‘spoke,’ ESN-CA is building on a seven-year-and-counting legacy of providing timely, demand-driven evidence support in this domain:
- co-leading and acting as the secretariat for the COVID-19 Evidence Network to support Decision-making (COVID-END), including both the global and domestic networks, from April 2020 through November 2022
- leading and acting as the secretariat for an evidence-synthesis network focused on pandemics and other health emergencies and supported by a $2 million CIHR grant from April 2025 through March 2027.
We have already created a number of assets that already constitute global public goods or can easily be built upon, used or engaged with to create global public goods:
- list of completed and ‘in progress’ evidence syntheses related to pandemics and other health emergencies
- list of additional evidence syntheses related to pandemics produced by members of the international network described four bullets down
- network of 24 evidence-synthesis teams from across Canada that collectively bring world-class expertise in rapid evidence syntheses in timelines ranging from days to weeks to months, using a range of methods and across many subject areas
- a taxonomy of pathogens (such as influenza type A and mpox) and other health emergencies (such as wildfires) and the infrastructure and health-and-social measures needed to address them (coming soon)
- a set of citizen-engagement resources for teams collaborating with citizen partners on evidence syntheses, a pool of citizen partners who have been trained and who are supported to work on evidence syntheses, an Indigenous advisor who can support our work on questions that touch on Indigenous peoples, and a set of subject-matter experts (e.g., on pandemics, zoonosis, and equity-related issues)
- a nascent international network of groups committed to enhancing coordination, collaboration and a collective-impact approach for evidence syntheses related to pandemics and other health emergencies (e.g., Cochrane Collaboration, Evidence Synthesis Ireland, The Johns Hopkins University, Pandemic PACT, and WHO)
- an evidence-synthesis request form.
We look forward to future discussions within and beyond our network, including with partners in the Global South, that will allow us to play a role in the full range of capabilities expected of a spoke in ESIC’s health hub-and-spoke model.