In the wake of the recent Ebola outbreak, researchers and public health specialists are offering evaluations and recommendations to strengthen global preparedness systems. The Pandemic Preparedness Team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is working to develop a final recommendation for if/how BMGF should engage in improving global preparedness for future outbreaks. The START team's analysis will inform a component of the BMGF team’s work to prepare recommendations to be presented in Global Program Leaders for engagement going forward.
The START team was engaged to conduct a comparison of common themes and recommendations across six high profile reports that were global in scope. The team also identified differences between the reports and gaps within the overall set of recommendations from the group of six reports. To complete this analysis, the START team created an Excel tool that included all recommendations and sub-recommendations from the set of reports. The Excel tool included the ability to sort information across the reports by common domains and key words of interest. To conclude, the START team conducted a gap analysis to determine which of the recommendations already had some implementation or funding action behind them and which did not.
