TASK FORCE FOR GLOBAL HEALTH INC
325 Swanton Way, Decatur, GA 30030 www.taskforce.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: The mission of The Task Force for Global Health is to solve large-scale health problems affecting populations through three impact areas: health system strengthening, center for vaccine equity, and neglected tropical diseases. These impact areas include programs such as pandemic preparedness, polio eradication, field epidemiology training, public health informatics, health workforce development, and medical surplus recovery.

The Training Program in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network(TEPHINET): Key highlights from our work this year is to develop, connect, and mobilize a global field epidemiology workforce to strengthen public health systems and advance health security: 1) The TEPHINET Secretariat is developing a new strategic plan to drive our work over the next 5 years. 2) Launched a 10-year network-wide learning strategy to ensure a well-trained and professional global field epidemiology workforce prepared to address evolving public health priorities. 3) TEPHINET, CDC, and WHO identified public health leaders to invite as members of the FETP Enterprise Strategic Leadership Group (SLG) to implement the recommendations of the Global Field Epidemiology Roadmap. 4) Entered a new 5-year cooperative agreement with the CDC to execute more than 40 projects aimed at strengthening FETPs, trainees, alumni, and regional FETP networks, as well as improving detection and response to specific public health problems including non-communicable diseases, hepatitis, and COVID-19. 5) Sixteen FETPs received Emergency Capacity Building Grants from TEPHINET to support activities to strengthen their COVID-19 response and build capacity for response to future pandemics. 6) Through funded projects, TEPHINET provided operational support for COVID-19 response activities in 9 countries. 7) Hosted monthly global teleconferences for FETPs to share experiences, challenges, and lessons learned during COVID-19 response. 8) Accreditation Working Group developed standards for the accreditation of intermediate-level FETPs as well as a reaccreditation process for accredited FETPs. 9) Provided learning and professional development resources to FETP trainees and alumni, including a new e-learning course on scientific writing, a contact tracing course, and a webinar on becoming a public health emergency responder with GOARN. 10) Convened an expert working group to begin exploring strategies for TEPHINET to support scientific publishing among the field epidemiology community. 11) Together with partners around the world, celebrated the 40th anniversary of FETP. 12) Announced the first World Field Epidemiology Day to be held on September 7, 2021, to raise awareness of the important work of field epidemiologists and advocate for increased investment in building field epidemiology capacity globally. The Public Informatics Institute Program(PHII) provided direct services to the U.S. public health system through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and funding from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation. This funding supported PHII and its partners in efforts to increase the capacity of public health informaticians and other public health leaders and practitioners to improve the collection, management and use of information and information technology for protecting and improving health and reducing disparities. Key activities included providing technical assistance and online tools to state and local health departments in linking to private healthcare electronic records systems for the purpose of electronically reporting disease cases; providing training to public health professionals in essential informatics competencies; convening and managing a forum to inform ongoing nationwide digital contact tracing efforts on COVID-19; and equipping pilot sites across the United States to commence data collection on opioid use disorder in pregnant women. Additionally, PHII is an ongoing partner on a collaborative Gates Foundation-funded project that is collecting data to reduce childhood mortality across the globe; this project is working on mortality surveillance activities at sites in Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. PHII is also engaged with USAID funding to conduct a vendor analysis and software evaluation on the creation and launch of a new, modernized database for tracking neglected tropical diseases. The existence of this database will unify and standardize tracking and data analysis efforts that are part of the global, inter-organizational campaign to eliminate and eradicate neglected tropical diseases. Health Campaign Effectiveness Program: During the 2020 fiscal year, the Program fostered cross-campaign learning and systems change in response to COVID-19's impact on planning, implementation, and follow-up. The advisory body convened by the Program to design the Health Campaign Effectiveness Coalition assumed the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to dramatically alter how campaigns function in the future and present new opportunities and challenges for collaboration across campaigns. Thirteen organizations with global reach contributed to and agreed on the Health Campaign Effectiveness Coalition design, vision, goal, and theory of change. The Program is building the evidence base on campaign effectiveness and responding to the impact of COVID-19 on campaigns. The Program engaged more than 30 peer reviewers in the development of technical briefs and collection of more than 280 guidance documents, articles, and best practices in cross-cutting topics across health campaign domains. List of countries the Program has engaged with during FY20: Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, India, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and S. Sudan The MedSurplus Alliance Program(MSA): is a cross-sector alliance that works collaboratively to improve access to quality donated medical products through accreditation, donation initiatives, capacity-building, technology solutions, and leadership. MSA Accredited Medical Surplus Recovery Organizations (MSROs) and Ascension Health MSA are providing essential medical supplies, devices, and equipment to clinical settings worldwide and low resourced communities in the United States. Annually, MSROs ship over 700 40ft containers of supplies and equip thousands of small medical mission trips. Dispensary of Hope accepted a significant donation of the difficult to obtain drug hydroxychloroquine for distribution in the United States to treat patients with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus symptoms, childhood arthritis (or juvenile idiopathic arthritis), and other autoimmune diseases. Supplies OverSeas donated over $1,000,000 in PPE and equipment to hospitals, clinics, first responders, free testing sites, and 70 nursing homes. The kits4Life Program includes four medication study sponsors (Eli Lilly, Bayer, Janssen, Sanofi US) and five Medical Surplus Recovery Organizations. Together they collected and donated products from clinical research sites in 25 states. Kits4Life enabled the donation of at least 5,810 medical devices, pieces of equipment, and cases of products to health systems in The Bahamas, Belize, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Eswatini, Haiti, Kenya, and the United States of America. COVID-19 Response: Medical product donations make it possible for doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers to combat disease outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics by providing the supplies and equipment they need. When COVID-19 emerged in Asia, MSROs were well prepared to provide over 9 million masks, gowns, and gloves to combat the initial epidemic. Today as the virus spreads at home, the MSA and its members have turned their attention to meeting local needs. The MSA and its members provide donations, support supply chain collaborations, and provide warehouse services to donors, hospitals, and health systems changing conditions

The International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) works tirelessly for a world free from trachoma, even in the midst of a global pandemic. ITI contributes to the ultimate elimination of trachoma by stewarding Pfizer's donation of Zithromax(R) to treat and prevent the condition; building and strengthening partnerships to accelerate progress; and developing innovative tools to share data. One of the many highlights of 2020 involved ITI delivering the country of Nauru its first-ever Zithromax(R) shipment; from Brussels to Singapore to Brisbane to Nauru, the shipment included 14,448 treatments with a total distance of 12,451 miles. Nauru conducted its first trachoma mass drug administration (MDA) in May 2020 and wrapped up MDAs in June 2020. Between September 2019 to August 2020, ITI also organized just-in-time shipments of 29,754,936 million treatments for trachoma shipped to be distributed at MDAs in 15 countries. In the first nine months of 2020, more than 9 million people no longer needed Zithromax(R) for trachoma treatment (as of August 25, 2020). As of August 2020, ITI has shipped more than 905 million treatments to trachoma endemic countries since 1999. ITI continued its data management support for Tropical Data, a free mobile phone-based service to support trachoma programs as they conduct prevalence surveys, providing them with robust data for decision making on where antibiotic treatments are needed and where they can be stopped. As a key player in the global trachoma community, there have been tremendous achievements in reducing the population at risk of blindness from trachoma from an estimated 1.2 billion people in 2000 to 136.9 million in May 2020 according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Record (WER). ITI will continue to work smarter so that the dream of a trachoma free world becomes a reality. The Mectizan Donation Program: In 2020, MDP approved 433 million treatments including 371.5 million treatments in countries where LF and onchocerciasis are co-endemic and 61.5 million treatments in IDA countries and actively contributed in the promotion of the new WHO NTD road map and participated in many virtual meetings. At country level, because of the pandemic, the 2020 MDAs were cancelled in part of or in all endemic districts in many African countries like Nigeria which received 48% of the 749.8 million tablets shipped in 2020. Part of the 2020 budget surplus was reallocated in a special grant announced by Merck to support countries through the partner NGO in their effort to prevent SARS-Cov2 contamination when resuming MDA in countries. As of December 31, 2020, 7 grants ($210,863) were disbursed including 2 to The Carter Center for Ethiopia and Nigeria, 2 to Christian Blind Mission for CAR and South Sudan, 3 to Helen Keller International for Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria). The remaining $289,137 are carried over to be issued in 2021. Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy Program(GPZL): In September of 2019 GPZL launched the Zero Leprosy Toolkit at the 20th International Leprosy Congress in Manila, making available to the leprosy community a large body of best practices intended to improve and inform their work. In November GPZL conducted a Single-Dose Rifampicin Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (SDR-PEP) Research and Practice Workshop in partnership with the Leprosy Research Institute and Netherlands Leprosy Relief in Amsterdam. Additionally, in November, GPZL jointly conducted a country review of the Moroccan National Leprosy Program with WHO's Global Leprosy Program and helped the program craft a roadmap to zero leprosy for the country. In January of 2020, GPZL began the process of selecting 10 new country partners. Following examination of 23 applications based on indicators for readiness, in-country partner networks, program needs, and political criteria, GPZL selected the following countries to implement the Zero Leprosy Country Model: Cambodia, Cote d'Ivoire, Federated States of Micronesia, Ghana, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. In March and April, the Global Partnership shifted attention to COVID-19 related challenges facing the leprosy community. GPZL launched three COVID-19 emergency response working groups. The first working group, the Leprosy Emergency Operations Committee, resolved multi-drug therapy (MDT) distribution issues to ensure that leprosy patients could access the medication they need. The second working group, the Emergency Advocacy for Persons Affected Working Group, consulted with more than 125 persons affected by leprosy from 20 plus countries to gather information about the leprosy community's needs during the pandemic and advise NGOs and governments on how to meet these needs. GPZL published the results of this global consultation in a publication in Leprosy Review, via an information dashboard on the GPZL website, and a fact sheet. This working group also partnered with a group of women affected to produce a video about the findings of the consultative calls. The third working group, the Post COVID-19 Working Group, met to discuss a path forward for the leprosy community in a post-COVID world through conversations with stakeholders, increased collaboration, and stronger alignment of the leprosy community in preparation for future challenges. In addition to the working groups, GPZL issued guidance about leprosy and COVID-19, in partnership with WHO's Global Leprosy Program and ILEP, in response to the pandemic. This guidance, along with partner resources, news related to COVID-19, and products from the three working groups, comprised the COVID-19 Resource Hub, created on the GPZL website in May and June. Also in June, GPZL, in partnership with WHO GLP, conducted a webinar on single-dose rifampicin post-exposure prophylaxis (SDR-PEP), exploring the process of starting SDR-PEP implementation for National Leprosy Programs. In July GPZL began a mathematical modeling project that created models demonstrating the impact of leprosy investment on the burden of disease, encouraging increased investment from international donors and national governments. Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center(NTD-SC): Funded principally by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the United Kingdom AID (UK AID), the NTD-SC aims to optimize Operational Research (OR) to eliminate neglected tropical diseases which threaten the lives and well-being of more than one billion of people in some of the world's poorest communities. As of 2020, the NTD-SC manages a portfolio of more than 250 OR projects spanning 60 countries, and targeting all five neglected tropical diseases amenable to preventive chemotherapy: lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, STH, schistosomiasis and trachoma, morbidity and social science. Some of these OR study products have resulted into program recommendations which the World Health Organization (WHO) has endorsed and adopted into WHO policy while others are clinical trials which may result in new therapies for NTD diseases. Moreover, The African Research Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (ARNTD) is another funding program facilitated through NTD-SC with funding from USAID and UK Aid. In addition, the NTD-SC serves as the Secretariat for the Coalition for Operational Research on Neglected Tropical Diseases (COR-NTD) yearly meeting. This meeting brings together a growing group of researchers and country program implementers working to foster important collaborations to address the challenges faced by NTD programs which prevent the shared goal of eliminating these infections. The 2-day event convened 450 individuals from more than 40 countries and 128 organizations with 80 proposals for 24 breakouts sessions and 13 innovations, translating ideas into future OR projects for 2020. In addition, the NTD-SC is working with African Research Network for NTDs (ARNTD) support the third cycle of small grants program (SGP) to develop research capacity in the African region and sponsored by USAID and UKAID. This continues to be competitive among African researchers, resulting in high-quality projects supported through the grants.

POLIO PROGRAM: Since early April 2019, the Polio Outbreak Response Technical Support Team deployed a total of 14 times to Ghana, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Congo-Brazzaville, and Zambia. In a time of growing scale and scope of circulating type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV2) outbreaks, the Outbreak Response Team provides highly respected and valued expertise across the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) partnership to ministries of health to improve active case search, enhance surveillance efforts, and support for planning and implementation of vaccination campaigns. Supplementary immunization activities targeted hundreds of millions of children since the team was created, and the long-term nature of their deployments has provided essential continuity in settings that often see high turnover of staff. In Ethiopia and Zambia, members of the team have taken the lead on supporting the Ministries of Health in developing comprehensive surveillance proposals for continued use, with SOPs and protocol for district surveillance staff. These include the utilization of Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) residents as sources of valuable local human resource capacity. The institutionalization of this expertise is crucial for these countries working towards controlling outbreaks and ultimately eradicating polio. Polio Antivirals Initiative: The objective of the Polio Antivirals Initiative is to develop two antiviral agents with different mechanisms of action that can be used to safely and effectively treat B cell deficient wild or vaccine-derived prolonged poliovirus excerpters. These individual are at risk of developing paralytic disease and/or dying and transmitting the virus to others. Two virus-specific antiviral agents, pocapavir and V-7404, are presently undergoing preclinical and clinical evaluation by ViroDefense Inc. This year, a Phase 1 single and multiple dose clinical study was completed with V-7404. V-7404 was generally well tolerated and oral administration resulted in plasma concentrations that are expected to be effective in inhibiting poliovirus replication when administered in combination with pocapavir. The GMP manufacturing of bulk drug substance and product have been conducted and placed on stability. Work is underway to submit the regulatory work to enable the conduct of a Phase 1 clinical study of the combination of pocapavir and V-7404. Discussions with WHO have been held to discuss the potential Emergency Use Listing of the combination following completion of the necessary clinical studies. The Partnership for Influenza Vaccine Introduction (PIVI) is a public/private program that works in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Ministries of Health, corporate partners and others to create sustainable, seasonal influenza vaccination programs in low- and middle-income countries. PIVI donated 18,500 influenza vaccines during the FY (to Macedonia and Cote d'Ivoire), and awarded 10 sub-awards including: Albania (communications, capacity building for flu fighters); Bhutan (multi-year award - communications materials, capacity building for health workers); Cote d'Ivoire (operational costs for vaccinating health workers); Kenya (assess introduction of flu program on EPI rates); Laos (multi-year award - estimate cost of flu illness outpatient/inpatient, conduct iPIE to estimate cost of flu program); Kyrgyzstan (multi-year - NITAG training, economic burden study); Mongolia (KAP, communications materials); North Macedonia (communications materials, health worker training, improve cold chain, increase accessibility of flu vaccine); SECID (multi-year - analysis of joint procurement, training on flu vaccination), Vietnam (multi-year - 3 regional workshops and AEFI surveillance). Ready2Respond (R2R) operates as a global collaboration of partners from the public, private and non-profit sectors committed to augmenting low- and middle-income countries' readiness to respond against influenza and emerging respiratory viral pandemics. The Global Funders Consortium for Universal Influenza Vaccine Development is a mechanism to bring together major funders of research and development of universal influenza vaccines along with key stakeholders to accelerate progress in the field through creating a common landscape, identifying critical gaps, and coordinating around a common vision. During FY20 the Consortium convened its third annual in-person meeting (November 2019) to review work done and plan for the coming year. During this meeting, the Consortium conducted its first industry engagement meeting which was attended by 14 manufacturers and several funders and provided an open discussion on universal influenza development from the industry perspective. Progress over the past FY included: creating a mechanism for sharing data and activities - including meeting, calls, web-site, peer-reviewed papers, industry engagement, annual meetings and reports; initiating work on tools for stakeholders including - Influenza Vaccine Roadmap; Technology Landscape; Protocol Sharing Platform; a meeting on Modelling for Investment Case for Universal Influenza Vaccine; and facilitating co-funding opportunities including - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Flu Lab Grand Challenges; European Union / Indian Collaboration; Innovation working Group; Sabin-Aspen Vaccine & Policy Group; and the Industry Engagement Work Group. Brighton Collaboration Program: The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) funded Brighton Collaboration and its Safety Platform for Emergency vACcines (SPEAC), both established at the TFGH in 2019, experienced exponential growth with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of 2020. From a programmatic perspective, the SPEAC team planned to meet its objectives to enhance vaccine safety assessment across CEPI development programs, harmonize safety assessments during clinical trials and continuously improve the SPEAC program framework. Through early January 2020, SPEAC prepared for scale up and an extension of its original scope of work: to grow the CEPI portfolio beyond its initial focus on Lassa Fever to include landscape analyses of other target diseases such as MERS, Nipah, Rift Valley Fever and Chikungunya, to continue to support new vaccine developers, to reinforce its structure and procedures to implement the scope of work and upscale its support structure through the identification, recruitment and training of additional clinical safety experts worldwide, with a special focus on Low-to-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). The very next month (Feb 2020), stakeholders recognized that a significant amount of effort would need to be diverted to learning about and responding to the evolving nature of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). As the challenges grew, SPEAC adapted quickly and increase its capacity, more rapidly than anticipated, to support developers and CEPI. Since then, it has focused mostly on the COVID-19 pandemic, notably successfully: 1) organized a global consensus webinar on and publication of vaccine-associated enhanced disease (VAED), 2) developed a draft list of COVID-19 Adverse Events of Special Interest (AESI) and updated it quarterly based on the rapidly exploding medical literature, 3) developed standardized Benefit-Risk Assessment of VAccines by TechnolOgy (BRAVATO), in other words safety templates, for each of the major COVID-19 vaccine technology platforms: nucleic acid, protein, viral vector, inactivated and live viral vaccines, 4) presented both the AESI list and BRAVATO safety templates to the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) in May 2020 for its endorsement, 5) developed and published standardized case definition for Sensori-neural hearing loss and formed a working group for VAED, 6) created a functional meta-Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), 7) formed ad hoc review boards for urgent safety issues that arose during clinical trials. Hepatitis Program: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted all aspects of society, including efforts to combat viral hepatitis. Nonetheless, the Coalition remained committed to supporting the work of hepatitis elimination programs either by providing resources to inform the continuation of hepatitis services under changing conditions or by spearheading initiatives to keep hepatitis elimination on national and global health agenda. Below is a summary of the Coalition's achievements in 2020: 1) The Coalition presented at the 2019 European CDC (ECDC) Network Meeting in September 2019. 2) The Coalition participated in the 2019 WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region Hepatitis Advisory Board meeting in Lahore, Pakistan. 3) The Coalition led organization of the International Viral Hepatitis Elimination meeting in December 2019. 4) The Coalition launched the "Innovations in Hepatitis Elimination" to highlight real-world efforts advancing hepatitis B and C elimination globally in February2020

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