Health & Life Sciences

Access Partnership serves as the Secretariat for the APEC Vaccines Task Force (VTF), a public-private initiative established in 2020 under the APEC Health Working Group. In collaboration with APEC economies, the VTF led the development of a multi-year strategy to improve immunisation in the region. The action plan outlines 21 specific targets and measurable indicators to help APEC economies build resilient, sustainable life-course immunisation programmes by 2030, organised around seven core pillars.

To support implementation of this action plan, track progress, and drive accountability, Access Partnership developed the APEC Regional Dashboard on Vaccination Across the Life-Course, which uses primary and secondary data to assess progress and features best practice spotlights from economies and partners.

With 2025 marking the halfway point for both the Action Plan and the WHO Immunisation Agenda 2030, the Dashboard provides a critical platform for knowledge sharing and performance monitoring. We continue to work with APEC economies and private sector partners to evaluate gaps identified in the dashboard, inform policy reforms, and co-develop strategies to accelerate vaccine uptake and strengthen immunisation systems across the region.

In Latin America, patients wait an average of 57 months – nearly five years – for access to innovative medicines after FDA or EMA approval. Regulatory convergence accelerates access by streamlining review processes, reducing duplication, and promoting more efficient use of limited regulatory resources. Access Partnership works with regulators, industry and academia – as well as ministries of trade, finance, and health – in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific to advance regulatory convergence.

In the Asia-Pacific, Access Partnership acts as Advisor to the Chair and Vice-Chair of the APEC Regulatory Harmonisation Steering Committee (RHSC), a multi-stakeholder platform that promotes a strategic and coordinated approach to regulatory harmonisation. Access Partnership equips regulators with international best practices to continually drive regulatory convergence in a constantly evolving scientific environment. Through a set of key performance indicators, the RHSC tracks progress on regulatory convergence in the region. For example, in 2008, only nine economies allowed a single licence to cover multiple sites. As of 2024, 16 economies allow multi-site licences.

In Latin America, Access Partnership serves as Secretariat for Americas RISE for Health (RISE) – a multisectoral platform that harnesses the collective strengths of the region to build sustainable health economies and ecosystems. Through its regulatory pillar, RISE found that while major markets in the region have the legal authority for regulatory reliance, how that reliance is used varies. RISE is also developing regulatory KPIs to measure and track regulatory convergence and established the RISE Network for Regulatory Capacity Building to train regulators.

Our team of experts at Access Partnership have supported many health financing policies and sectorial reforms in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. In collaboration with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, USAID, and the World Health Organization, we have contributed to advancing the institutionalisation of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and Managed Entry Agreements Globally.

Currently our team is engaged in and actively contributing to emerging global policy topics in the field of systematic priority-setting for health technologies with the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes research (ISPOR) and Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi). These include living HTAs, value-based pooled purchasing, HTA for medical devices and hospital-based HTA.

Access Partnership has supported internal and external capability building on market access policies and strategies, as well as policy shaping initiatives for infectious, non-communicable, and rare diseases.