Reimagining our Shared Approach to Fall Respiratory Virus Seasons: New Strategies for Transmission Reduction and Population-Level Benefit

Respiratory viruses continue to present a burden for the United States, despite the advancement of medical products that effectively prevent or mitigate severe illness, hospitalization, and death. These medical products have received marketing approval and coverage based on benefits to individuals, yet they also likely have population-level benefits that can play an integral role in reducing wide-spread disease transmission. In order to realize the population-level benefits from current products and facilitate the development of next-generation technologies that focus on reducing disease transmission, a systematic, shared framework is needed to promote multistakeholder led deployment.

The Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy has developed a framework for incorporating population benefits into regulatory and reimbursement processes. The framework, along with corresponding regulatory, coverage, and payment policy enacting steps, will be presented in a soon to be released strategy document. 

On November 14, Duke-Margolis will convene a public workshop focused on a new strategic direction for addressing the burden presented by respiratory viruses. The meeting comes at an important time, with renewed interest in containing the spread of respiratory viruses during the anticipated increase in prevalence in the fall.

This public workshop will cover: 

• Experiences to-date with the Fall 2023 respiratory virus season, including multistakeholder strategies to address the spread of COVID-19, RSV, and influenza through both non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and the availability of new medical technologies. 
• A new framework for combatting viral disease transmission by incorporating population-level benefits into existing regulatory and reimbursement decision-making. 
• Policy steps to facilitate multistakeholder collaboration to enact the population-level benefit framework for reducing disease transmission with use of currently available technologies and NPIs, as well as next-generation diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics that are in development. 
• The roles of federal agencies, state and local public health authorities, providers across all health care settings and services, commercial payers, employers and community organizations in leading a comprehensive response strategy for respiratory viruses within the transmission reduction and population-level focus of the proposed framework. 

The aim of this workshop is to solicit feedback on the population-level framework and policy steps, along with additional considerations for implementation of transmission reduction at a national scale. Strategic discussions between health policy experts, public health officials, and federal government and private sector leaders will showcase a new, shared approach for combating respiratory viruses.