The importance of civil society in pandemic preparedness. A conversation with Carolyn Reynolds from the Pandemic Action Network

Our guest this week is Carolyn Reynolds, Co-founder of the Pandemic Action Network (PAN). 

In this episode we discuss how Carolyn’s involvement in the response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa led her to co-found PAN; and what PAN works to achieve, particularly in the lead up to the high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response later this year. 

We also discuss:

• Some of PAN’s accomplishments responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and preventing future pandemics. 
• The role PAN has played in the creation of The Pandemic Fund. 
• What it means to have a civil society voice for pandemic preparedness.

As well as her work with PAN, Carolyn is also a Global Health Policy Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an expert adviser to the Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security, and a Distinguished Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health. She has served as a senior adviser to international organizations, including the Global Financing Facility, World Bank, WHO, and Global Preparedness Monitoring Board.

You can find out more about the Pandemic Action Network here. You can also follow PAN on Twitter at @PandemicAction.

More on the World Bank’s announcement of the first round of funding for The Pandemic Fund is available at this link. 

We encourage you to join the conversation on Twitter at @CentreHealthSec and @AusAmbRHS

Transcript

Please note: We provide transcripts for information purposes only. Anyone accessing our transcripts undertake responsibility for assessing the relevance and accuracy of the content. Before using the material contained in a transcript, the permission of the relevant presenter should be obtained.   

The views presented in this podcast are the views of the host and guests. They do not necessarily represent the views or the official position of the Australian Government. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 00:22

Welcome to Contain This. I’m Dr Stephanie Williams, Australia’s Ambassador for Regional Health Security. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and our region. We recognise the continuing connection to land, waters, and community and pay our respects to Elders past and present. Today's episode is about civil society and pandemics, and who better to talk with than Carolyn Reynolds, co-founder of the Pandemic Action Network, or PAN for short. In this episode, we talk about how the Pandemic Action Network started, what they do, especially what they're doing in the lead up to this year's high-level meeting on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. As well as being the co-founder of PAN, Carolyn is also a non-resident senior associate in global health policy at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and expert advisor to the Commission on strengthening America's health security. Prior to co-founding PAN, Carolyn held leadership positions at path and the World Bank Group. I hope you enjoy the discussion.

So can we start, Carolyn, with you telling us a bit about what Pandemic Action Network is, and how you got to be here? 

Carolyn Reynolds 01:39

Well, thanks, Stephanie. It's been a journey over the last three years. And actually one that started before COVID. This, the idea that became Pandemic Action Network, started all the way back in 2018. And actually, before that, from my work, involved in the response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, back in 2014, 2015, you'll remember those horrific images that went across our television screens of what was happening. And that did engender a global response at the time and a recognition that outbreaks are increasing. And that this is a threat to human health and to the planet. But very little was done. There were a lot of reports written a lot of hand wringing about what the world needed to do better to prevent this from happening. But then the crisis went away, and it disappeared off of our television screens and off of political leaders’ radars. I was at the World Bank at the time, and then I left to join a global health organisation. And but I really carried with me that idea that what is it going to do? What is it going to take to change the political calculus to make political leaders do something to prevent pandemics, which we know are - certainly outbreaks are increasing in frequency and the threat of pandemics is increasing, particularly with things like climate change. So how do you change minds on anything? It's not just about having the right ideas, there are plenty of ideas and knowledge about what we need to do differently. That has been the issue. Experts have been screaming off the rafters about this for decades. But it's about political will. And it's about public demand to do something differently. So actually, back in 2018, myself and my future co-founder of PAN, we pulled together a group of like-minded organisations, World Health Organization, the World Bank, some major foundations, civil society, and private sector organisations. We were all talking about this challenge of pandemic preparedness and showing up at different international meetings to talk about it, but nothing was being done. So we said, let's, let's forge an advocacy coalition and come together and align our efforts. So we had that idea back in 2018. Unfortunately, no funding to get it started. So it was really a labour of love. Until COVID, until early 2020, when the pandemic really started escalating. And one of our funder partners, in this initial conversation said, that was a good idea you had, we're gonna give you money to get it started. So myself and three other co-founders, we jumped in, and we just started this up in April of 2020. And Pandemic Action Network was born. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 04:36

So between 2018 and 2020, was it an idea or were you in your basement after hours making plans? What in those two years, what was happening? 

Carolyn Reynolds 04:47 

So I was doing a range of things. My co-founders were all and we hadn't come together as a group at that time we all had, we're different working for different organisations doing different things, I was working in that space of global health and pandemic preparedness. I've spent my career working on global health and development, and on advocacy for these issues, not just on global health, but on global development, or more broadly on education on gender equality, social protection. So I've worked on many issues at the World Bank and from other vantage points, but I had, I carried with me that passion, that this agenda needed more political attention. So I was working for a range of partners, and then when but on different projects when the pandemic hit. So it was it was a shift, but all of us shifted right in early 2020. All of our worlds suddenly shut down and COVID became part of everybody's story. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 05:53 

So you had an idea, unfortunate timing in terms of a pandemic, but a fortunate opportunity for seed funding. Tell us about the early days what was actually involved in building an advocacy coalition. You had four people and a sense of what you wanted to achieve. What were the first six months like what were you doing? 

Carolyn Reynolds 06:16

Well, it was crazy. Again, everybody, right? Everybody's worlds changed literally almost overnight. In terms of the way we work, the way we interact with friends and family, the way we conduct our conducted our daily lives. So in that sense, we were like everybody else, it's just that the pandemic was and is our business. And so yes, and even three years later, we are still a virtual network, we have grown from four or five people to now a dozen or so people, but it's really about our partners, we have grown from a network of about 20-25 partners to begin with, to a global network of more than 350 organisations, across sectors, across geographies, working in many different areas. But all came to have come together around this the mission of our network, which is to both end the current pandemic, that we are still in, this crisis, but to prevent the next one. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 07:18

So what do you do in those early days? And even up to now, what have you found to be easier than you expected in building such a large network and advocacy coalition?  

Carolyn Reynolds 07:27

In building Pandemic Action Network, PAN, you know, I and my colleagues have applied lessons learned from decades of, of advocacy, communications, agenda setting. How do you change minds and convince leaders, whether they're in the public sector, or the private sector to drive change to drive change for the global good, to advance global development goals. And I've been fortunate over my career to work on campaigns around universal health coverage, to promote learning for all, and maternal and child health, and have been part of building some of the existing global organisations that are committed to those causes. So I came at this with a sense of how do you create an agenda? How do you create a compelling story, and a platform that will bring people together, I've built a coalition here in the United States, was one of the founders of something called the US Global Leadership Coalition, which has been built around, again, partners across sectors committed to push the US government in Congress and convince the American public that it's worthwhile for the United States to be involved in the world and to invest in international development and diplomacy. So came at this with experience of what does it take to build an effective coalition? Well it takes, first of all, a compelling mission, and we had that, certainly with a pandemic, before us and affecting, everybody could see the impact that it had on lives and livelihoods. It is about creating a platform where people feel that they have skin in the game, that they have something to benefit, it's not just that they care about the issue, but that they, they see the value in it's for their organisations for their missions. And again, because COVID has, in this pandemic has touched, you know, almost literally everyone on the planet, that in a way was not the hard part, we crowded in a lot of people into our platform early. And as I said, we've grown significantly. Over the last three years, we also made it easy for partners to join, it was like agree with our mission, and indicate that you're willing publicly to be a part of this. And do your part. And for some partners, that's being a very active partner in co-creating agendas and calls to action and events and whatever else it will take to put these issues in front of political leaders and decision makers and funders. For others, it's just adding their name. So we make it easy for partners to be as active or to play a role in whatever way suits them best. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 10:32

You have a range of organisations and academic institutes and partners and across the world, but when you sign up, what do I want to, say I was signing up today, what do I have to do for you? And what are you going to do for me as the Pandemic Action Network? 

Carolyn Reynolds 10:46

So what you have to do for me is pretty simple, demonstrate publicly that you're committed to this cause and then participate in some way, whether that's in meetings, signing onto calls to action, you know, ideally, you know, committing your organisation to, to use your political influence your levers of influence, and whatever geography sector you have, every one of us can touch and every one of us is an advocate in whatever, we may not think of ourselves that way. But we all have a role to play in convincing our political leaders and to, to do the right thing. And so simply raising your voice, in whatever way you can well we'll do for you is one connects you with other partners who are interested in this topic and space, who you may then be able to collaborate with, on whatever agenda you're interested in whatever aspect of pandemic preparedness and response makes, is most important to you, too, we're going to amplify the work that you do, and bring that to the attention of a much wider audience around the world. And three, for those issues that are just too they require all of us to come together, they're too big for any single organisation to solve. And that is true about an issue like pandemics, it is a global challenge that requires global action across sectors. So we bring people together to co create what should be the solutions? What should we be calling for? What should we be asking political leaders or business leaders or leaders in the multilateral space, whoever they may be? Help us define what that what those asks should be.  

Dr Stephanie Williams 12:34

So in your 350-strong network, do we zoom geographically, down into Australia, in the Indo Pacific, I know you have a large, contingent and African support network and base. 

Carolyn Reynolds 12:24

And growing and growing in Asia too.

Dr Stephanie Williams 12:50

But tell us about Australian and Asia members? 

Carolyn Reynolds 12:53

Yeah, it's, we'd love to continue to grow that it's been, you know, it's been a progressively, I think, almost on a weekly basis, partners, we find partners, or they find us and reach out to us and say, we'd like to join what you're doing. We have an Asia regional working group that's open to any partner in any country, that meets a couple times a month to come together and share information knowledge, you know, that's one of the values we bring, whether it's in our Africa regional working group, our Asia regional working group, or our global efforts, is to help partners share intelligence, share knowledge, get smarter on the issue of pandemic preparedness and response. And so that is, we have partners in probably close to a dozen countries across Asia, and that continues to grow. And so, it for those listening, please join us pandemicactionnetwork.org, we'd love to have you on board. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 13:59

So I had a chance to look on your website just earlier and click through to your three-year impact report. And because one of the questions I was interested in asking was how do you know that you're making a difference? How, do you have examples, you know, specific examples about the impact of pan in advocacy or, or whatever examples you choose to share with us? 

Carolyn Reynolds 14:27

Sure. I mean, many things we're proud of that we know that we've helped to where we've helped to drive action over the last three years, of course, on issues as big, again, as a, as a pandemic and preventing future pandemics, no single actor is going to make it happen alone. But we do feel that the fact that we've we know the fact that we've created a platform and brought so many partners together and aligned folks behind issues has made a difference. We played a very significant role in pushing for the creation of the pandemic fund. And that is a new entity that has been created at the World Bank just in the past year. And I'm proud to say with leadership from Asia, from Indonesia, Australia, in fact, China's a member of this as well as a contributor, it's a multilateral fund, to focus on pandemic preparedness and response and help particularly low- and middle-income countries to bolster their capacity to detect, prevent, and rapidly respond to future pandemics. It's been something that's been a long time in coming, again, an idea that preceded COVID, that I and others were pushing before this pandemic. But particularly under Indonesia's G20 leadership, we were able to play a significant role in building political consensus to get this setup. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 15:50

You know, as a, someone who's been working in public health and health security, both domestically and internationally for many years, it's easy. If you join the sector, now, people as hurt sometimes you don't know what wasn't there. And as a consumer of the Pandemic Action Network, as a platform as a way to get across issues to seek different perspectives. I can remember when it wasn't easy to even think about what a civil society voice was for pandemic preparedness. And I have personally and professionally benefited from the platform that you and your co-founders, and now the growing network has created. I am interested in one point, though, which is it strikes me that you at the very beginning, you talked about a compelling mission and a human story around health issues in the past and even education in your previous life. And outside of a pandemic experience a shift, you know, the COVID pandemic, one of the things that I have always wondered is, it is it hard to create a human interest and kind of a catalysing feel around with action network for pandemics, because they're so broad, and they affect people so differently, and they affect everyone in from all walks of life and thus, there's potentially less unifying that brings people together. Have you found that difficult or hard at all? Because the pandemic served its purpose, but now we're in an interesting phase. And we're having to mobilise will and enthusiasm and commitment in the absence of a shared lived experience. 

Carolyn Reynolds 17:36

Yeah, we are unfortunately pandemic fatigue, or I even say pandemic amnesia has rapidly set in in recent months since certainly since the spring when, who and leaders around the world declared an end to the COVID crisis, not an end to the pandemic, there still is a pandemic. 1000s of people still are dying around the world, sadly, every day from COVID. But a recognition that this is moving into an endemic phase and something like other infectious diseases that we will have to continue to live with and be on guard for. You know, back to your first point you made. We there was no network that exists, we really have felt like we have created something not only a value to our partners, but something that was really needed. We have filled a gap in the market, so to speak, not that there aren't many. There are many coalitions around many issues and certainly many civil society-driven coalitions we are also a multisectoral coalition, deliberately so which is one unique aspect, but nothing that was focused on that we're aware of that was focused on the issue of pandemic preparedness and response. And so we actually feel that, you know, although we were set up in the early days of COVID, and, you know, rightly so we're focused on the immediate crisis before us that the whole our mission, our purpose is actually even more important today than perhaps it was early in COVID. Because the attention, political attention and public attention has shifted away. That is our mission, our mission is to break that cycle of panic and neglect, that we have seen too often with these threats, because this will not be the last pandemic. It could be. But it will not be unless countries around the world populations, communities around the world take the kind of preventive actions to stop outbreaks from becoming deadly and costly pandemics. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 19:29

In September, there's a high-level meeting at the United Nations General Assembly week on pandemic preparedness and response. So, from your perspective what's your read of what the world should be trying to achieve at that meeting? And what are you hopeful or less hopeful about, for the PPR pandemic preparedness and response? 

Carolyn Reynolds 19:52

It is more challenging certainly, than when we started, to keep the attention on the threat of pandemics, but it is an existential threat to humanity. And so that is our mission. And that is our purpose. And we're going to stay in the fight to do that. Because the world does need to be better prepared for these threats. And we've seen the, the dramatic impact that this pandemic has had, and it could be much worse than next time. But we have to talk about what can be done not just, we will not be successful if we only sort of sound the alarm, but we actually have to bring the solutions and have to bring the will behind it. And that is what we're doing with this platform. Right? You talked about the challenges of bringing so many different people together across so many different sectors. Sure, it is, it is a challenge. But that's actually the power. And you know, there may be some not everybody comes together around every single issue. But we do have, by virtue of the platform we've created, we've been able to, to create a multiplier effect. The high-level meeting in September, on pandemic prevention preparedness response, we hope will be a milestone, it's something actually we called for, from the almost the get go and we created pan in April of 2020. Sadly, it's taken three years, over three years into a major global crisis, to get political leaders together at the United Nations in this way to focus on this challenge, but it's happening. And we are focused on creating that as a catalyst moment to have leaders stand up. But we hope and declare, let's we must come together as a global community and do what it takes to prevent such a deadly pandemic from happening again. And in that declaration to lay out the things that need to be done to address the issue of equity, to make sure that we don't face a situation again, where parts of the world don't have access to the same types of life saving tools that others do. So we close that equity gap, that we bolster health systems around the world so that not only are we are they prepared to make people healthier, but to prevent outbreaks from spreading in the first place and becoming pandemics that we address the issues of financing, that there are more investments both at the national level, but also importantly at the global level and pandemic preparedness response. And that, because that's been a major issue is that lack of funding, and I mentioned the pandemic fund earlier. That's a key tool we need to help leaders commit to raising money. You know, the estimate on what it will take to get the world better prepared over the next several years is about $10 billion a year. That sounds like a lot of money. Think about the trillions, literally trillions, 10s of trillions, that this pandemic cost the global economy and incalculable really losses in terms of lives and livelihoods. So we hope that that moment will be a moment of commitment, a moment of laying out an agenda for action, but it also we need to have accountability so it can't be a one-off meeting. It needs to there needs to be follow on, we would say annually really reviews. Where is the world in terms of being better prepared? What do we have to do leaders coming together and assessing the situation, just as they do for climate, right? We have a Climate Conference of Parties climate conference where leaders gather every single year, we need that same approach when it comes to pandemics because like climate, again, this is an excellent existential threat to humanity. And it does require it's a global challenge that requires a global solution. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 23:49

Tell us about a couple of practical examples of what your advocacy looks like in terms of how you and your team, your colleagues, spend your time on this declaration as an example? 

Carolyn Reynolds 24:00

Sure, well, one of the lessons of being an effective advocate is you have to be agile. Because we sit outside government we sit outside of, of multilateral institutions or other institutions of power, we can influence what those institutions do, but we're not running those processes. So you have to be agile, to respond to opportunities, but also to forceful and pushing for those opportunities to be created, like the high-level meeting. So we, on a week to week, day to day basis, what do we do, we convene meetings to bring partners together, we bring in speakers who are in some of these institutions, like the World Health Organisation, like the United Nations, like the government of Australia, or Indonesia, or the US or wherever, that can talk about what their institutions what their governments are doing. And by, but also using those as moments for us to influence their thinking and influence their agendas. We share a lot of information every week, we put out something we call our Pandemic Action Playbook that gathers news and information and from around the world on this topic to make all of us smarter, but also give our partners a steer in terms of where they can, where they can focus their attention and where they can be influential, we put together calls to action. On the high-level meeting, you mentioned we've had over 150 organisations around the world, sign a letter on sort of the five priorities that we see for the high-level meeting. So that that has an amplifier effect, where if each of those organisations were to do it on their own, it wouldn't be so impactful, but bringing that many together, one, they they've all been part of creating that message and owning it. But then that speaks and resonates with other governments in a different way when you bring that many people together to carry the same message. So those are some of the examples of what we do day to day and, and also then work with ourselves each sitting in different countries, but also with our partners to influence the decisions that individual governments and organisations make. For example, I spend a lot of time here with the White House with the US government with the Congress to influence their budget decisions, their policy decisions on a day-to-day basis. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 26:19

Carolyn, I've so enjoyed talking with you. And thank you for running us through how the Pandemic Action Network came to be, and some of the ingredients for its success. And it's certainly admirable how much energy you and your colleagues and the network have to throw toward such a compelling mission that you have described today. So thank you so much for your time. 

Carolyn Reynolds 26:41

Thank you. 

Dr Stephanie Williams 26:44

Today we've heard from Carolyn Reynolds, the co-founder of the Pandemic Action Network, or PAN. You can find more information on how to partner with PAN by following the link in our show notes. During the episode, we also talked about the new pandemic fund. And so in the show notes, there's also a link to the World Bank's announcement of the outcomes of the first round of funding from the pandemic fund. And that's not long after we recorded the podcast in the Asia Pacific region. grants from the pandemic Fund had been awarded to projects in India, Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, and Mongolia. Join us in another fortnight for the next episode of Contain This.

Contain This is produced by the Indo Pacific Centre for Health Security. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia and the Indo Pacific region. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters, and community and pay our respects to Elders past and present. You can follow us on Twitter @CentreHealthSec.