The unprecedented use of travel measures during the COVID-19 pandemic by virtually all countries worldwide proved to be controversial. A key challenge for strengthening global pandemic governance is to understand which, when and how best to use different types of travel measures to achieve public health goals.  To address this challenge, the Pandemics and Borders Project used research findings and lessons learned about border management during the COVID-19 pandemic to develop several simulations that highlight the complexities, trade-offs, and priority-setting processes that characterize this challenging policy area. Simulations have been used as teaching and learning tools across disciplines, but have been less utilized as a tool for improving global health governance. These simulations fill this gap and serve as engaging educational tools to promote learning and improve decision making among policy makers and global health organizations in response to infectious disease outbreaks.  

We have created and piloted a COVID-35 simulation over four iterations of pa senior Health Sciences seminar on global pandemic governance at SFU. The team has also facilitated workshops at research conferences, including Health Systems Global and the Canadian Conference on Global Health.  In the final year of the project, we will be facilitating workshops using 4 different simulation models at selected locations in Canada and internationally and evaluating their efficacy as educational tools. For more information regarding planned workshops and potential collaborations, please contact us.

For more information on different Pandemics and Borders simulations, please see Interactive Simulations