COVID-19 has revealed that the world was not prepared for a pandemic that we had every reason to anticipate. Yet we neglected to adequately invest in developing and maintaining global health system resilience. Consequently, the COVID-19 pandemic should serve as a wake-up call to global leaders that is every bit as significant – and urgent – as the Global Financial Crisis of more than a decade ago and the worsening climate emergency of today.
As global leaders emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we must seize the opportunity to learn the lessons from this crisis, making it a catalyst for serious reforms – both for improving the health resilience of economies and for looking more deeply at the issue of healthier alongside cleaner growth.
The Reform for Resilience Commission (R4RX) was created to shape new models, metrics, and practical policy reforms to help leaders in the public and private sectors deliver the changes needed for healthier growth.
The Asia Pacific was successful in preserving public health and economic prosperity in 2020, piquing interest in how the region tracked, contained, and controlled the spread of COVID-19. However, the pandemic has posed systemic challenges to these societies that will change how public health, business, and environmental stewardship are conducted.
The Asia-Pacific Hub of the Reform for Resilience Commission housed at CAPRI collaborates with the Secretariat, the Americas Hub at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and international partners to spearhead the Resilience Commission’s research and networking.
Journal Article on Oxford Academic
“Global Commissions of Inquiry” have usually been associated with the multilateral initiatives of governments and international organizations. However, various styles of “global commission” have emerged over time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, global commissions have been a key aspect of the COVID-19 international policy landscape, quickly emerging, in 2020 and 2021, to corral knowledge and evidence. These include “formal” commissions, such as the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and the Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy, and “informal” commissions, including the Reform for Resilience and The Lancet Covid Commissions. This paper considers whether these Commissions have been engines for new ideas and global policy knowledge or whether this “chorus” of COVID Commissions represented a “clutter” of ideas at a time when global policy focus was needed. Global Commissions, in general, deserve greater scholarly attention to their design and the construction of their legitimate authority as hybrid and private commissions enter global policy making alongside official commissions.
During June 28 – July 1, 2022, the CAPRI team and members of its board of directors traveled to Singapore to attend the Global Health Security Conference 2022 (GHS2022), where the Reform for Resilience Commission’s co-chairs and hubs met in person for the first time. We spent an afternoon on the sidelines of the conference discussing the commission’s strategic direction, research, and convening for 2023.
On October 26, 2021, the Asia-Pacific Hub of the Reform for Resilience Resilience Commission partnered with the Miller Center, the North American Hub at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and the European Hub at the European University Institute School of Transnational Governance and Cambridge Public Health to present a global, online event on recent successes and challenges in pandemic management.
