About - Objectives of the Working Group

The Advance Market Commitment (originally "Pull Mechanisms")Working Group is a policy research group convened bythe Global Health Policy Research Network at the Center forGlobal Development to explore the feasibility of advance guaranteeagreements as a tool for stimulating research, developmentand production of vaccines for neglected developing-countrydiseases. Funding for Working Group meetings, analytic workand consultations was provided under a grant from the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation.

Because the power and limitations of push mechanisms arereasonably well understood, the Working Group has focusedexclusively on whether and how to put into operation advanceguarantees as an additional new tool for global health products.The results of this work are intended primarily to inform thedonor community, which may wish to move toward implementationof such an arrangement as one of several instrumentsto improve access to affordable vaccines for the developingworld.

The Working Group was convened solely for the purpose ofexploring the practicality and value of advance contracting; itdoes not have and will not seek the legal status, the budget or themandate to implement such an agreement. Members of the WorkingGroup were selected for their knowledge and expertise, andparticipate on a voluntary basis in their individual capacities.

We focused exclusively on vaccines in this Working Groupfor a number of reasons. First, vaccines are among the most costeffectiveof health interventions, and immunization programshave been shown to be enormously successful. Second, a keyconstraint to even greater effectiveness of immunization programsis availability of and access to new products related to the specificneeds of children in the developing world. And fi nally, vaccinesare purchased mainly by the public sector and development ofnew vaccines is a global public good so it is appropriate for donorsto be thinking about the most effective ways to channel theirimmunization funds. We did not choose vaccines because it isthe only area where advance contracting would work-many ofthe principles outlined in this report may be transferable to drugsor diagnostics with some modifi cations.

Although the Working Group is not expected to continue after the publication of this report, resources related to the group’s work will be available at the Center for Global Development’s website.