The Vital Role of the World Health Organization: Advancing the Global Health Agenda “Part Four”

The Organization will rapidly assess new evidence, update its products to incorporate that evidence, and move toward a “digital-first” approach to facilitate national adaptation of WHO products, with the ultimate aim of ensuring that all countries have immediate access to the best available normative guidance.

Strengthening the focus on health equity in scientific work, innovation, and evidence generation

WHO will also strengthen its focus on health equity in scientific work, innovation, and evidence generation, ensuring that all research, normative products, and relevant technical products consider how potential barriers to health equity — such as barriers related to gender, age, ethnicity/race, income, education, and developmental disparities — affect levels of uptake.

Accelerating access to safe, effective, quality-assured, and affordable health products

WHO will continue to strengthen its leadership and trusted normative work to enable access to safe, effective, and affordable health products for procurement by agencies and countries through the WHO prequalification programme.

These products include medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, vector control products, medical devices and assistive technologies, and blood and blood products to meet health needs equitably.

WHO’s integrated, end-to-end approach aims to ensure best practices across the entire value chain, from research and development to patient use.

This includes supporting increased capacity of regulatory authorities to assess and approve health products in line with safety, efficacy, and quality standards; strengthening local manufacturing capacity; improving nomenclature systems; improving selection and use through WHO essential and priority health product lists; enhancing affordability; and establishing more efficient supply and procurement systems.

Work in this area will evolve to respond to countries’ changing health needs, particularly to enable faster and more equitable access to medical countermeasures in emergencies, including through further strengthening WHO’s emergency use listing procedures based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expanding WHO and country scientific and innovation capacities to accelerate health progress

Through its work in science, innovation, research, and evidence generation across multiple sectors, and with the support of scientific advisory bodies, partners, and collaborating centres, WHO will anticipate and shape the GPW 14 research agenda. The Organization will stimulate and expand the generation of, and access to, new evidence and knowledge on key existing and emerging challenges and on the effectiveness of interventions to address them.

Implementation science removes barriers to the delivery of proven interventions, while innovation generates solutions to overcome barriers using local evidence and multi-stakeholder engagement. WHO will place particular emphasis on identifying innovations that have the potential to improve health for all or that are already doing so, and on supporting countries to maximize the benefits of these innovations through their identification and sustainable and equitable scale-up.

Foresight and horizon-scanning activities position the Organization at the forefront of emerging knowledge and technologies that carry potential health benefits and risks.

Demand from Member States for WHO guidance on health research, ethics, and governance, and for capacity development to translate emerging evidence into locally adapted policies and practices, has increased in light of the rapid pace of new technologies and knowledge.

WHO will support countries by strengthening science and innovation ecosystems, supporting domestic scientific infrastructure, ensuring research policies that bridge the gap between evidence and tangible impact, and reinforcing national research capacities.

Member States will be supported to build robust, multisectoral evidence ecosystems that draw on global research, local data, and other types of evidence to set and implement country-relevant research agendas and meet the needs of diverse population groups. WHO will help Member States enhance their ability to systematically and transparently translate different forms of evidence into actionable insights for national policy-making and decision-making processes.

Leveraging digital transformation and information systems for better health

Digital technologies have the potential to enable countries to strengthen, scale up, and accelerate public health, clinical medicine, and well-being outcomes, as well as population health surveillance and monitoring.

This will be complemented by the development, aggregation, and support for the use of reference digital tools, information systems, building blocks, and strategies, plans, and policies that help governments strengthen the enabling environment for digital health transformation. The continued production of guidance, guidelines, technical specifications, and benchmarking tools to assess, select, and manage appropriate digital health and artificial intelligence solutions will support this process.