Designing a New Global Scientific Assessment Body for Pandemics
The Pandemic Risk Outlook (PRO), a PAX sapiens initiative, drives political focus on pandemic risk and prevention, keeping them central to global discourse and decision-making. Amid ongoing pandemic reform efforts—including progress toward a WHO pandemic agreement—PAX has a forward-looking assessment agenda to unveil options for a scientific body with the capacity to assess, predict, detect, and help control future pandemics. This initiative is led by PAX sapiens Dr. Louise Gresham, Senior Fellow, Global Health Security. Linkedin
Initiative Advisor
Louise Gresham
A Critical Window: A Publication About this Initiative
Pandemic Risk Outlook (PRO), a PAX sapiens initiative, advances the creation of a process that enables governments, scientific institutions, and non-state actors to jointly assess pandemic risk and direct financing to reduce it. PRO’s three-phase pathway—Validate, Design, Build—aims to ensure this process is scientifically rigorous, politically viable, and aligned with global priorities. Since the October 2024 Brazil pandemic risk assessment workshop co-hosted by the National Academy and FioCruz, PRO has deepened support on risk drivers and methodological foundations. A July 2025 convening co-hosted with IPPS and IPPPR linked scientific work to governance, followed by further momentum at the UNF–NAM Science Strategy meeting in November 2025 as the initiative enters its Build phase.
With UN deliberations, IHR amendments, and pandemic accord negotiations ahead in 2026, the coming year offers a narrow but critical window to institutionalize this capability and help redefine the global health architecture of pandemic risk. This anthology shows how PAX sapiens is helping sustain political will at a moment of historic opportunity – and historic risk.
