Grant: Project Grant

The world relies on international treaties to address global health challenges, yet we lack the empirical evidence base on which to inform their equitable design and implementation. To design more effective and equitable international treaties, and maximize impacts for health, we must understand 1) whether, 2) how, and 3) for whom past international treaties have had effects. In Canada, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of international treaties in facilitating the sharing of scientific information, regulating international supply chains, and incentivizing cooperation in the innovation of tests and treatments. With the ongoing negotiation of a new pandemic treaty and revisions to the International Health Regulations, there has never been a more important moment in which to draw on the best available science to inform the equitable design and implementation of international treaties. In spite of the critical role of international treaties in advancing global health, policymakers primarily draw on personal experience, shared assumptions and intuition to guide the design, negotiation, and implementation of these instruments. Over the last ten years, our team has laid the groundwork for a new scientific approach to understanding whether international treaties work, how they work, and for whom they work. We will conduct a living systematic review and meta-analysis of international treaties, multilevel analyses of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and quasi-experimental evaluations of the Montreal Protocol to produce open science outputs and policy toolkits. By generating the open-access data, methods, and evidence needed to inform the equitable design of international treaties, we will contribute to designing better treaties that effectively address global collective action problems and make the world a healthier place for all.