COVID-19

COVID-19: CIHR’s International engagement

CIHR is consulting with international partners including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (Glo-PID-R) to determine how Canadian researchers can help in global research efforts and ensure that Canada’s response is aligned and coordinated with the international research response.

On January 31, 2020, CIHR signed a joint statement with Wellcome and 65 other signatories to share research data and findings relevant to the Novel Coronavirus outbreak, and played a leadership role in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) development of a Research & Development Roadmap.

The WHO-GloPID-R Global Research and Innovation Forum (Feb 2020) brought together over 300 scientists and national public health experts, including a number of Canadian researchers as well as representatives from CIHR. They discussed many aspects of the COVID-19 outbreak and developed a research roadmap to address it.

Key knowledge gaps were discussed, and target research priorities across different thematic areas were identified. This informed the design of CIHR’s COVID-19 Rapid Research Funding Opportunities and their focus on both biomedical and social interventions.

In June 2020, the UN Deputy Secretary-General asked Dr. Steven Hoffman, Scientific Director of CIHR Institute of Population and Public Health to lead the development of a UN Research Roadmap for the COVID-19 Recovery, building on the work of the UN Framework for Immediate Socio-economic Response to COVID-19.

CIHR is leading a global consultation process to develop the research agenda that is bringing together input from 38 international funding organizations as well as research and implementers from around the world.

Date modified: