The SPEAC Executive Board, Meta-DSMB, and Project Management Team joined CEPI’s Clinical Development Team in London in June to discuss strategy, ongoing work, and opportunities for collaboration.
First, SPEAC’s Meta-DSMB met to discuss their work to support CEPI awardees. The Meta-DSMB consists of 17 global vaccine safety experts from 11 countries who review safety across CEPI-funded projects to identify possible safety concerns and patterns. They do this by attending the DSMB meetings as observers. The Meta-DSMB also supports CEPI awardees’ vaccine safety monitoring efforts by offering guidance, protocol review, and input for decision-making on pausing and resuming clinical trials. Although the Meta-DSMB has met routinely over the past five years, the meeting in London was the group’s first in-person event.
The SPEAC Executive Board also met with Heidi Larson, Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (LSTMH). Dr. Larson shared lessons from a community engagement project during Ebola vaccine clinical trials in Sierra Leone and Ghana. Discussions focused on monitoring rumors and building trust at the community level to improve public confidence in vaccines. Dr. Larson emphasized the need to move away from the negative framing of the term, ‘vaccine hesitancy,’ and instead focus on confidence and trust. Colleagues from IQVIA also joined SPEAC at LSTMH to discuss opportunities to collaborate in support of CEPI’s 100 Days Mission.
In a meeting at The Wellcome Trust offices with CEPI’s Clinical Development Team, IQVIA, and other partners, SPEAC Executive Board members presented an overview of the SPEAC project’s first years. They also highlighted progress related to a process for AESI X case definition development and the digital transformation of SPEAC tools and resources. CEPI partners also presented their work in various aspects of vaccine safety. The meeting closed with a discussion about strategy and plans to align project activities to best support CEPI’s mission to deliver a vaccine against a pandemic pathogen in 100 days.
