Abstract for: Closing evidence gaps to inform pandemic preparedness and response in Europe: Case study of the DURABLE network

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need for strengthened preparedness and response mechanisms to ensure timely access to safe and effective medical countermeasures (MCMs). Established in 2023, the DURABLE network provides high-quality scientific information to support the European Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). At its core, DURABLE contributes to identifying knowledge or evidence gaps, closing these gaps, and effectively communicating science to support MCM-related preparedness and response measures. Building on a Work-in-Progress (WIP) presentation at the 2024 conference, this paper presents a validated, qualitative causal loop diagram (CLD) to help assess the underlying drivers of DURABLE performance. Building on insights from 36 interviews and 5 group model building sessions, the CLD captures interdependencies between network characteristics (e.g., capacities, procedures, governance), interactions with stakeholders in the broader EU pandemic preparedness, and opportunities for improvement. The CLD reveals feedback dynamics that drive research efforts and support the generation, consolidation, and communication of knowledge to inform HERA decisions and actions, both under proactive and reactive modes. Resource requirements and operational structures that accelerate or delay research efforts are discussed. Building and sustaining network capacity, including background knowledge on a broad range of pathogens, is critical to effectively and rapidly fulfill requests for information from HERA. Building qualitative models serves as an important and necessary step towards quantitatively modeling the impact of different interventions on closing knowledge gaps. Learnings from this work can help assess the link between structure and performance for other research networks recently established to confront large-scale, cross-border health threats.