title: The role of vaccines and vaccine decision-making to achieve the goals of the Grand Convergence in public health.
abstract: On 17 and 18 July 2015, a meeting in Siena jointly sponsored by ADITEC and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was held to review the goals of the Global Health 2035 Grand Convergence, to discuss current vaccine evaluation methods, and to determine the feasibility of reaching consensus on an assessment framework for comprehensively and accurately capturing the full benefits of vaccines. Through lectures and workshops, participants reached a consensus that Multi-Criteria-Decision-Analysis is a method suited to systematically account for the many variables needed to evaluate the broad benefits of vaccination, which include not only health system savings, but also societal benefits, including benefits to the family and increased productivity. Participants also agreed on a set of "core values" to be used in future assessments of vaccines for development and introduction. These values include measures of vaccine efficacy and safety, incident cases prevented per year, the results of cost-benefit analyses, preventable mortality, and the severity of the target disease. Agreement on this set of core assessment parameters has the potential to increase alignment between manufacturers, public health agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and policy makers (see Global Health 2035 Mission Grand Convergence [1]). The following sections capture the deliberations of a workshop (Working Group 4) chartered to: (1) review the list of 24 parameters selected from SMART vaccines (see the companion papers by Timmis et al. and Madhavan et al., respectively) to determine which represent factors (see Table 1) that should be taken into account when evaluating the role of vaccines in maximizing the success of the Global Health 2035 Grand Convergence; (2) develop 3-5 "core values" that should be taken into account when evaluating vaccines at various stages of development; and (3) determine how vaccines can best contribute to the Global Health 2035 Grand Convergence effort.
authors.affiliation: PATH, Seattle, WA, USA. Electronic address: dkaslow@path.org.
authors.forename: David C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Kaslow
authors.affiliation: Instituto Butantan, Brazil. Electronic address: jkalil@butantan.gov.br.
authors.forename: Jorge
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kalil
authors.affiliation: Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA. Electronic address: debloom1@aol.com.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bloom
authors.affiliation: GSK, Siena, Italy. Electronic address: breghi@sclavo.org.
authors.forename: Gianluca
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Breghi
authors.affiliation: GSK, Siena, Italy. Electronic address: anna.m.colucci@gsk.com.
authors.forename: Anna Maria
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Colucci
authors.affiliation: GSK, Siena, Italy. Electronic address: ennio.x.de-gregorio@gsk.com.
authors.forename: Ennio
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: De Gregorio
authors.affiliation: National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, USA. Electronic address: gmadhavan@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Guru
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Madhavan
authors.affiliation: GSK, Siena, Italy. Electronic address: GENEVIEVE.C.MEIER@GSK.COM.
authors.forename: Genevieve
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Meier
authors.affiliation: Wellcome Trust, London, England. Electronic address: r.seabrook@wellcome.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Seabrook
authors.affiliation: Imperial College, London, England. Electronic address: x.xu@imperial.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Xiaoning
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D046688:Child Mortality; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003657:Decision Making; D014943:Global Health; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D017589:Immunization Programs; D009938:Organizations; D011634:Public Health; D014612:Vaccines
chemical_list: D014612:Vaccines
keywords: Global Health; Grand Convergence; SMART vaccines; Vaccines; Workshop