In January 2007, the China CDC and the NBR Center for Health and Aging brought together 80 executives from policy, public health, science, and industry to discuss how to build a model for global collaboration on pandemic influenza vaccine research, development, manufacturing, regulation. This model could include a new framework for the access to disease strain and sequence databases as well as international policy structures that facilitate manufacturing and development and encourage collaboration from all countries and parties.

Our efforts to create new research and policy platforms build on problem-solving aimed at the following issues:

• Misaligned incentives for collaboration and transparency
• Uneven access to information on strains and sequences
• Ineffective clinical trial methodologies
• Inadequate worldwide manufacturing capacity
• Inadequate international infrastructure for vaccine dissemination
• Political and economic barriers to vaccine R&D
• Inefficient approval and regulatory processes

Importantly, by carrying discussions from this workshop into the 2007 Pacific Health Summit and beyond, we hope to create a mechanism for long-term collaboration and engagement in the areas of research, development, and policy implementation. In the spring of 2007, we will add a public resource area to this site on pandemic influenza vaccine research, development, manufacturing, regulation, and policy.