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A New Paradigm for Pandemic Preparedness

A timeline with several rows is shown. The title reads, "Timeline of benefit from proposed investments." The second column shows the relative steps along the timeline and reads, "Initial infection," "local epidemic," "pandemic," and then "surpassed surge capacity." The last column is shaded light gray. The proposed investments in each row include active monitoring, monitoring in cross species contact spaces, identification of risk heterogeneities, models of disease progression, effective rapid vaccine templates, new models of epidemic spread, increased public trust of pandemic science, and work force training. The bars along the timeline are colored blue, yellow and green to indicate which dimension of pandemic preparedness are impacted directly. Blue is for prevention, yellow is for detection, and green is for treatment.
A timeline demonstrating when we would observe a benefit for investments in prevention, detection, and treatment efforts.

RYAN – A New Paradigm for Pandemic Preparedness

Nina H. Fefferman, John S. McAlister, Belinda S. Akpa, Kelechi Akwataghibe, Fahim Tasneema Azad, Katherine Barkley, Amanda Bleichrodt, Michael J. Blum, L. Bourouiba, Yana Bromberg, K. Selçuk Candan, Gerardo Chowell, Erin Clancey, Fawn A. Cothran, Sharon N. DeWitte, Pilar Fernandez, David Finnoff, D. T. Flaherty, Nathaniel L. Gibson, Natalie Harris, Qiang He, Eric T. Lofgren, Debra L. Miller, James Moody, Kaitlin Muccio, Charles L. Nunn, Monica Papeș, loannis Ch. Paschalidis, Dana K. Pasquale, J. Michael Reed, Matthew B. Rogers, Courtney L. Schreiner, Elizabeth B. Strand, Clifford S. Swanson, Heather L. Szabo-Rogers & Sadie J. Ryan

Article first published online: 9 November 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40471-023-00336-w

ABSTRACT: Preparing for pandemics requires a degree of interdisciplinary work that is challenging under the current paradigm. This review summarizes the challenges faced by the field of pandemic science and proposes how to address them. The structure of current siloed systems of research organizations hinders effective interdisciplinary pandemic research. Moreover, effective pandemic preparedness requires stakeholders in public policy and health to interact and integrate new findings rapidly, relying on a robust, responsive, and productive research domain. Neither of these requirements are well supported under the current system. We propose a new paradigm for pandemic preparedness wherein interdisciplinary research and close collaboration with public policy and health practitioners can improve our ability to prevent, detect, and treat pandemics through tighter integration among domains, rapid and accurate integration, and translation of science to public policy, outreach and education, and improved venues and incentives for sustainable and robust interdisciplinary work.

Read the full publication in Topical Collection on Infectious Disease.