14 April 2021

In global health, we have a responsibility to maximize the impact of everything we do. For clinical researchers, therefore, it is critical to design, analyze, and communicate (DAC) studies so that they provide definitive answers to key questions and lead to implementable results. Unfortunately, too many trials end up being uninformative, and the opportunity costs in terms of time, money, and lost trust is just too high. The DAC Trials Knowledge Hub is an open digital platform to help researchers address this challenge and optimize their study plans for informativeness and impact.

The Hub includes resources for evaluating designs and protocols to increase the likelihood that they will generate data that affect policy and practice. The Hub’s resources consist of information about a number of evidence-based best practices for study informativeness, an assessment questionnaire to support informative study planning, open-source clinical trial simulation tools, and more. 

Informative study outcomes are one of the most reliable ways to improve health and equity globally, both because they generate specific answers to important questions and because they create a positive feedback loop among scientists around the world who continue to design, analyze, and communicate new studies to build on existing knowledge. The resources in the DAC Trials Knowledge Hub can help funders, sponsors, regulators, IRBs, and physicians ensure the studies they work on are as informative and impactful as possible.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people's health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life.

The Global Health Network

The Global Health Network is a global open community of practice for health workers, research teams and research organisations. It facilitates, supports and enables research in diseases, places and settings where evidence is lacking. It works by sharing research methods, know-how and data between organisations, projects, regions and roles, and delivers capacity building, support and training to research teams and frontline health workers.