This case simulation helps students experience first-hand the challenges of multilateral negotiations in global health policy. In World Health Organization Negotiations on Developing and Financing Health Technologies students participate in negotiations as members of the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO). Representatives from all WHO member states attend planning sessions, which focus on a specific health agenda prepared by the WHO executive board. Students must collectively develop a resolution that the 66th World Health Assembly will adopt at the upcoming meeting in May 2013. The focus of the resolution is the development and financing of new health technologies for those diseases that disproportionately affect developing countries. The resolution must be developed in a group process; individual resolutions are not possible. Students play the role of country member states at the Committee trying to develop a compromise that will be adopted by the WHO Executive Board. 

This case follows the vaccine development for Meningitis A, a disease that routinely caused deadly epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa. The case explores why such a vaccine had not been developed previously and how the creation of the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) - a partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO) and PATH, a non-governmental organization - enabled the vaccine to be successfully developed over 10 years by creating a novel product development partnership. Students examine why the public/private partnership was successful and how such a model could be applied to the development of other vaccines and health technologies. Additionally, the case explores the strategies applied by Marc LaForce, the MVP’s director and veteran public health advocate, to make the MVP a success. In particular, the case examines the management skills LaForce exercised during his tenure to develop a vaccine that affected African countries could afford through their own health budgets.