Research Roundup: What we’re reading this week

In this guest post, Heather Ignatius—senior policy and advocacy officer at PATH—writes about the new Global Development Lab at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The Lab was formally launched at an event in New York City earlier this month by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. Last week I had the opportunity to attend a briefing on the new USAID Global Development Lab. The Lab—as it’s now referred to—aims to invent, test, and apply dramatically more cost efficient and impactful solutions to men, women, and children so they can lift themselves out of extreme poverty. It will collaborate with many stakeholders—including entrepreneurs, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), universities, and science and research institutions—to incorporate science, technology, innovation, and partnerships as a means to solve development challenges and improve the lives of millions of people in a short time span. The launch of the Lab brings the tremendous science, technology, and innovation credentials America has to offer to the practice of development. This effort will embed the principles of partnership and innovation into USAID’s DNA, allowing the agency to become a cutting-edge leader in development. The Lab aims to invent, test, and apply dramatically more cost efficient and impactful solutions to men, women, and children so they can lift themselves out of extreme poverty. Photo: PATH/Gabe Bienczycki The Lab will bring together a diverse set of partners to “discover, incubate, and scale breakthrough development innovations” in many of the sectors USAID works in, including health. There are eight stated areas of focus for the Lab: Food Security and Nutrition; Modernizing Food Assistance; Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths; Energy Access; Water Solutions; Child Literacy; Financial Inclusion; Rights, Participation and Accountability; and Humanitarian Response. Some of the agency’s key research programs, including the PEER Health Program and the Development Innovation Ventures initiative, will be housed within the Lab. It is encouraging to hear that health will be one of the issues areas the Lab takes up, and many of the innovations highlighted by the Lab are in the health arena—including products developed through USAID’s successful Saving Lives at Birth grand challenge. However, it should be noted that the majority of USAID’s investments in global health research and development (R&D) currently sit outside the Lab’s structure. As it moves from concept into operations, it will be important for USAID to ensure that the Lab is synergistic with the agency’s other global health R&D efforts. It will also be important to maintain investment for innovations that sit outside the Lab. As the bedrock of many global health successes, R&D is critical to developing the next generation of health tools that can prevent, treat, and one day halt existing and emerging global health threats. For more than 25 years, PATH has worked with USAID to identify global health needs and adapt, design, develop, and advance appropriate and affordable health technology solutions. By serving as the bridging agent between the public and private sectors, PATH has helped advance more than 80 technologies tailored to low-resources settings with more than 100 private-sector collaborators that have matched federal dollars two to one. At the Lab’s launch, USAID’s leaders issued an open invitation to partners to help shape the Lab’s formation. We look forward to working with USAID to realize the full potential of the Lab to accelerate innovation for health. It will not be possible to meet tomorrow’s development challenges without innovation. New and effective health solutions must be part of that equation.

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week. During a meeting last week at the United Kingdom’s Royal Society of Medicine, the topic of health research was raised and how it might fit into the post-2015 development agenda. At the meeting, UK Department for International Development Chief Scientific Officer Chris Whitty spoke about the necessity of forward thinking as it relates to global health research. Whitty acknowledged the need to think ahead to what research will be needed from 2020-2040 so that priorities are defined by what the global public health world might look like in the future. Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline plans to invest up to £130 million in Africa over the next five years to build the continent’s capacity to develop new tools to combat the region’s rising occurrence of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). New money will go to expanding manufacturing capacity in specific African countries, as well as open the world’s first open-access research and development laboratory for NCDs in Africa. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, and other donors will invest $240 million to fight neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in low- and middle-income countries. The new funding comes after a pledge by 13 drugmakers two years ago to donate medicines to treat ten NTDs, including river blindness, Guinea worm, and sleeping sickness. Dr. Deborah Birx has been confirmed by the Senate to be the next Global AIDS Coordinator, filling the post to lead the world’s largest health program. Widely praised by global health advocates, Dr. Birx previously led efforts to introduce the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief-sponsored rollout of life-saving HIV treatments to certain sites in Africa, and launched the first clinical research trials to show proof of concept that an HIV-preventing vaccine was possible.