A ‘Blueprint’ is a comprehensive document that explains, evaluates, and elevates big ideas to prevent future pandemics. A Blueprint is intended to provide an accessible introduction, be a rigorous evaluation, and achieve consensus for bringing these big ideas to reality. It involves laying out:

• A map of the current landscape – what we do and don’t know
• A vision of what it is possible to accomplish
• A theory of change to bridge the current landscape to our vision
• An actionable roadmap for making progress

The ultimate goal of a Blueprint is to elevate our collective ambitions and show how everyone– from researchers, entrepreneurs, regulators, legislators, governments, philanthropists, and members of civil society– can contribute to preventing the next pandemic.

Focus Areas

Our work currently focuses on transmission suppression – interventions that are effective against the majority of pathogens and that show promise for making it much more difficult for highly infectious diseases to spread. The sanitation revolution led to dramatic decreases in death and disease from water-borne illnesses such as Cholera, Typhoid, and Dysentery. Can we do the same for airborne illnesses such as SARS-CoV-2, Influenza, Measles, or a novel pathogen that may cause the next pandemic?

We started with a deep dive into a type of germicidal light known as far-UVC, given its exciting potential, but understudied safety and efficacy profile. In our Built Environment Transmission Suppression (BETS) project, we zoom out to investigate a much wider range of interventions that can reduce transmission across a range of different built environments. Our third project builds on work done in collaboration with Gryphon Scientific to address the other core component of transmission suppression: personal protective equipment (PPE). In order to ensure that the workers who operate critical societal infrastructure have ample amounts of effective PPE, we are writing a blueprint on what types of PPE are needed, how much, and how we can improve supply before and during future pandemics.