International leaders, scientists, and policymakers will present the lessons they learned about recovering from the pandemic and how to prepare for future outbreaks. They will debate the fundamental steps that must be taken to build preparedness and resilience and ensure equity and inclusiveness in the face of future healthcare crises. This includes financial planning, international cooperation, decision-making, and investments in research and development. They will discuss the following questions:

• What are the key lessons from these three years of Covid-19?
• What issues must be prioritized and addressed in pandemic recovery plans?
• How to establish a pandemic recovery plan in a world fraught with inequality?
• How to establish an inclusive global preparedness plan that enables low- and middle-income countries to provide the necessary investments in their health systems and production?
• Which national policies should be implemented to build resilience for future health emergencies?
• In face of a failed multilateralism system, how to rebuild trust and incentives between countries for more effective international cooperation and a coordinated preparedness plan?
• What role can disinformation play in global health crises and how to fight disinformation?

Life expectancy has increased considerably over the last two centuries. However, the unsustainable development model that facilitated this progress has a devastating impact on the Earth’s natural systems. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution are pushing the Earth beyond its limits and represent a major threat to planetary health and everything it supports.

There is a direct correlation between healthy ecosystems and healthy human communities. The damage we are causing to the planet, combined with increasing inequalities and poverty, is leading to an increase in climate-related deaths, non-communicable, infectious, and respiratory diseases, as well as malnutrition in all its forms, with severe consequences on mental health and wellbeing.

The speakers will highlight the current threats to human health, threats to the sustainability of the planet, and threats to the natural and human-made systems that support us. They will then discuss how to use integrated solutions to respond to the effects of environmental drivers of disease outbreaks and disease control strategies.

The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated an urgent need for effective international health surveillance systems. At the moment, most health surveillance systems only operate locally or nationally. An integrated and multi-disciplinary surveillance system, focused on data sharing between countries and a global intelligence network for disease control, will be an essential first step to preparing and responding to new outbreaks.

Community-based citizen science can make substantial contributions to building effective health surveillance systems. Community members can provide valuable updated information that helps identify problems, prioritize local solutions, and mobilize support and advocacy. Empowering communities through access to information and training is an important step toward this goal.

Creating a global surveillance system is highly complex. On the one hand, it must incorporate environmental and animal components into health assessment – the One Health approach. This includes multi-disciplinary efforts to understand the interactions between the oceans, air, freshwater, biodiversity, climate, and many other factors that influence human health and well-being.

On the other hand, there are tricky administrative and procedural concerns that need to be considered. The launch of the World Health Organization (WHO) Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence was a good start. Among other important questions, the Hub aims to address issues such as how to foster a trustful global network of collaboration; how to ensure technology transfer and development in low-income countries, how to establish continuous technical guidance and training between countries, and how to standardize and interpret data collection from different sources.

The speakers will discuss the challenges and potential solutions to developing local and global health surveillance systems.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the huge inequities in access to vaccines and the gap in the level of immunization between developed and developing countries and especially in the least developed countries. These disparities made global efforts to tackle the pandemic harder. They led to more hospitalizations and deaths, and exacerbated the impacts of long covid. Economies were also unevenly impacted as different countries emerged from the worst of the pandemic at different rates. These consequences were felt far more acutely in the most vulnerable countries.

The pandemic also exposed and exaggerated the imbalance in access to technology and the inequitable terms related to technology transfer agreements. The dependency on critical health goods and consumables manufactured by a few countries became even more evident, especially when the pandemic started to impact the supply chain and restrict the flow of goods around the world. All of these issues point to the urgent need for greater international collaboration and unity so the world is better prepared for the next major health emergency. This starts by addressing local health needs and ensuring that there is equal access to immunization and vaccines.

During this event, the first panel will address the funding mechanisms that are needed to accelerate vaccine innovation. The second panel will highlight some of the regional experiences of creating skills for local production and investment in the development and introduction of new vaccines to support immunization programs. They will also express their ideas about how to and address public health emergencies.

The Center for Data and Knowledge Integration for Health (CIDACS) of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and The Rockefeller Foundation are co-hosting this session to share the co-creation journey and future stages of their joint initiative – the launch of the Alert-Early Warning System for Outbreaks of Pandemic Potential (AESOP) in Brazil.

There are already numerous predictive modeling tools designed to forecast disease emergence and inform public health decision-making. Most of these models rely on a few basic data inputs and are limited in scope and scale. The cutting-edge AESOP tool integrates far more data points and combines infectious disease surveillance data streams and non-health data such as climate change, habitat destruction, and socio-demographics. It is also envisioned that AESOP will become an advanced and predictive modeling tool using AI/machine learning supported by a federated network system research centers, local to national public health entities, and relevant governmental and non-governmental organizations.

There has been significant progress with AESOP since its launch in June 2022. This session will focus on the following:

• celebrating the Fiocruz-Rockefeller Foundation co-creation journey in the development of AESOP;
• highlighting the vision for AESOP and its use in early-warning outbreak surveillance and detection;
• sharing insights into AESOP’s cutting-edge innovation and its development stages;
• showcasing progress to-date and AESOP’s emerging dashboard and system;
• exploring AESOP’s potential benefits to the surveillance ecosystem.

History has shown that a variety of hazards can affect health and well-being. These include natural disasters, chemical, radiological, physical, and biological hazards such as epidemics, pandemics, emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) and bioterrorism. Environmental hazards, particularly those exacerbated by the climate emergency, are also on the rise. The huge cost of these hazards and health emergencies on people and economies illustrate why preparedness to face such threats at all levels (local, regional, national, and international) is so vital.

Urban areas have unique vulnerabilities that make them more prone to the impacts of health emergencies. This is a concern as more than 50% of the world’s population live in urban areas, and scientists calculate that this will increase to 70% by 2050. This means that preparedness for health emergencies in cities is especially important.

During this session the speakers will explore the capacities that make local actors essential in mitigating health hazards. They will also debate what constitutes preparedness and the role different stakeholders can play in this process.