To help address the need for coordinated and contextual ethics support in decision making in health emergencies, WHO is piloting a Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Ethics Network (PHEEPR).
AIMS
The core aims of the network are to:
- To build ethics capacity in country, to support both preparedness and response
- Help coordinate and support real-time, contextual ethical decision-making in public health emergencies
- To conduct empirical and normative research, so that we are:
- better prepared for future outbreaks
- addressing outstanding ethical issues from past outbreaks
- To build fair, collaborative partnerships, so that research can be both generated by and conducted by ethicists in low and middle-income settings, with a view to growing capacity for the future.
- To support the work of the WHO R&D Blueprint
- To ensure that the outputs of the network are coordinated, flexible, globally distributed and positioned to inform and be incorporated into practice
As there is no precedent for such a network, we believe a pilot phase is an important stage in demonstrating ‘proof of concept’ and learning what the global health community needs.
To make this pilot phase manageable, we are focusing our activities around two topic areas in research during public health emergencies:
- the introduction of novel therapies and vaccines
- governance and oversight, including ethics review
If capacity allows, we will work on a third area, that will be decided through consultation.
To achieve success it is critical that the network leverages existing expertise, networks and development structures.
We will shortly publish a concept note detailing our proposal for the pilot and eventual network. This document will be the starting point for consultation on the network.