Based at the Task Force for Global Health in Decatur, GA, and affiliated with Emory University, the Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center (NTD-SC) aims to optimize operational research to eliminate neglected tropical diseases which threaten the lives and well-being of millions of people in some of the world’s poorest communities. This work, conducted in close coordination with partners, addresses challenges facing neglected tropical disease (NTD) programs in effectively scaling up, then successfully scaling down when their goals are reached and finally sustaining the reductions achieved in disease prevalence.
Founded in 2013, the NTD-SC evolved from the earlier (2001) Lymphatic Filariasis (LF) Support Center and is supported principally by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID), with additional support from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Their funding enables the Center to work together with the NTD community in addressing priority research needs for NTDs to guide decision-making and optimize disease surveillance.
The Center and its collaborators play a key role in perpetuating the global momentum to control or eliminate NTDs that accelerated so dramatically following expanded commitments by partners endorsing the London Declaration in 2012. This Declaration pledges to control and eliminate suffering due to NTDs by 2020 and is supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) “Roadmap for NTDs,” a plan detailing specific goals for these targeted diseases.
By building on existing research activities the NTD-SC takes advantage of synergies to achieve rapid progress in the response to new technical challenges as they arise. Through a highly collaborative project structure – which includes the convening of a “Coalition for Operational Research on NTDs” (COR-NTD) – NTD researchers can create a forum where operational needs can be identified, research work can be undertaken together, and technical advances made to maximize the impact of national programs targeting NTDs.
Aims and overview
The global momentum to control or eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases accelerated dramatically following the new, expanded commitments by partners endorsing the 2012 London Declaration. Supporting WHO’s 2020 Roadmap on NTDs which calls for sustained and expanded programs to eliminate lymphatic filariasis (LF) and trachoma and to control schistosomiasis, soil transmitted helminths (STH), and onchocerciasis, the London Declaration also recognizes the essential role that research must play in achieving these goals, and it calls for new efforts to advance research and development through new partnerships and enhanced collaboration at national and international levels.
Such research is especially critical for those NTD programs targeting disease elimination. As programs reach new stages in the elimination process, new tools and strategies are needed to overcome new challenges and guide both programmatic decision-making and post-intervention surveillance. Many aspects of this needed research are common to all of the current disease-specific NTD initiatives, and therefore the technical approaches to them are in many ways similar. To capitalize on this similarity and to promote both efficiency and effectiveness in the operational research supporting these programs, the NTD Support Center endeavors to:
- help focus the NTD research community on its common challenges by creating a network of investigators to identify and prioritize the essential, often cross-cutting NTD research needs
- define and undertake a coordinated research initiative targeting these prioritized needs
- use the network of researchers and program implementers as an active ‘early warning ’ mechanism to identify and respond to new challenges facing NTD programs
- work with the donor community to ensure that support for research is adequate to meet program needs
