Get Involved with IVR
Addressing the IVR’s goals and tracking progress over time will require broad engagement from many areas. The Call to Action provides a way for individuals and organizations to show their support for the overall goal of achieving improved influenza vaccines and for the critical R&D activities needed to achieve it. This Call to Action is for - but not limited to - those in roles outlined below:
- Researchers: Align influenza-vaccine—related research proposals and activities with goals and milestones outlined in the Influenza Vaccines R&D Roadmap.
- Donors and funders: Fund research projects that address goals and milestones outlined in the Influenza Vaccines R&D Roadmap.
- Vaccine developers and manufacturers: Invest in new technologies that have the potential to improve existing influenza vaccines and lead to broadly protective or universal influenza vaccines.
- Policymakers: Promote policies and allocate resources to: (1) strengthen global influenza virus surveillance, (2) generate data to better define the burden of influenza, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) around the world, (3) support a mission-driven and coordinated strategy to improve influenza vaccines, and (4) implement or enhance in-country influenza vaccination programs that can effectively deliver annual influenza vaccines and pandemic vaccines.
- Regulators: Work closely with industry and public health partners to clarify regulatory issues related to licensure of next-generation influenza vaccines.
Why a Roadmap?
Charlie Weller, PhD
Wellcome Trust
London, UK
Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH
Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN, USA
Kanta Subbarao, MBBS, MPH
WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza; Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory and the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection & Immunity
Melbourne, Australia
Rajeev Venkayya, MD
Aerium Therapeutics
Cambridge, MA, USA
William Ampofo, PhD
University of Ghana
Accra, Ghana
Cheryl Cohen, PhD
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, South Africa
John CW Lim, MBBS, MS
Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School
Singapore
Margaret Hamburg, MD
National Academy of Medicine
Washington, DC, USA
John McCauley, PhD
Frances Crick Institute
London, UK
Martin Friede, PhD
World Health Organization
Geneva, Switzerland
Roadmap to a Flu-Free Future
Watch the Influenzer Initiative's episode on the Influenza Vaccines R&D Roadmap as part of their lessons from COVID-19 documentary series.
GFC Endorsement
The Global Funders Consortium for Universal Influenza Vaccine Development endorses the Influenza Vaccines R&D Roadmap. The Consortium is comprised of global funders and stakeholders that support the development of a universal influenza vaccine; these stakeholders include:
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research
- China CDC
- Department of Biotechnology, Government of India
- European Commission
- Flu Lab
- Human Vaccines Project
- Inserm
- Open Philanthropy
- Partnership for Influenza Vaccine Introduction (PIVI)
- PATH
- Sabin Vaccine Institute
- Task Force for Global Health (TFGH)
- US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
- US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH)
- Wellcome Trust
- World Health Organization (WHO)
"There is an urgent need for better tools to prevent, detect, control, and treat influenza, including more effective vaccines . . . that would instill public confidence and uptake, especially in low- and middle-income countries.”
—WHO Global Influenza Strategy 2019-2030
“Before the roadmap, there was broad agreement that the world urgently needed better influenza vaccines, but no consensus on how to get there. Now, for the first time ever, we have tapped a global brain trust of influenza experts united behind a clear strategy for developing vaccines that can reduce the burden of seasonal outbreaks, improve pandemic preparedness and accelerate the quest for universal influenza vaccines.”
—Bruce Gellin, MD, MPH, Rockefeller Foundation