Welcome to the simple, early version of the ESIC website.

Three announcements were made in the United Nations’ Goals Lounge on 21 September in anticipation of the UN General Assembly high-level week:

  1. a near doubling of the initial ESIC financial commitment, bringing us to US$126 million mobilized in little under a year
  2. five proposed foundational investments that directly address 16 of the 40 solutions proposed in the ESIC roadmap, and which indirectly address many more
  3. transitional arrangements will support governing, coordinating and funding ESIC for collective impact.

These announcements are summarized in an ESIC statement and in a UN press release. The Goals Lounge event was livestreamed and recorded.

The five foundational investments include:

  1. sectoral hubs to catalyze radically more timely, relevant and affordable evidence synthesis to support SDG achievement
  2. regional hubs to support impacts at the country level, often amplified through UN Country Teams
  3. an open data system to streamline how we share and reuse synthesis data
  4. a living inventory of AI-enabled digital evidence synthesis tools to support choice and reporting
  5. an agile monitoring, evaluation and learning infrastructure.

These investments can be considered ESIC’s proposed strategy for its first six to 12 months. 

The transitional arrangements include:

  1. Steering group with six members who reflect the types of diversity that ESIC champions (such as region, form of evidence, career stage and gender)
  2. Communities council with members who reflect the diversity of ESIC interest holders (and over time who also represent groups supported through the foundational investments)
  3. Funders interest group (FIG) executive with representatives of funders that have made large, new funding commitments that are aligned with ESIC, including the Wellcome Trust and UK Research and Innovation (as co-chairs) and Health Research Board, Jacobs Foundation, and National Institute for Health Research.

A process for designating a secretariat – to be based in the Global South – will be decided at a later date.

Additional details about the foundational investments and transitional arrangements can be found in a slide deck. We welcome feedback on these proposed foundational investments. Feedback can be sent to info@evidencesic.org. We regret that we can’t respond individually to every email we receive. A thematic summary of the feedback will inform revisions to the proposed approach.

Additional statements released in support of the Goals Lounge event include:

The ESIC roadmap (in its infographic, 10 page and 50+ versions), the Cape Town Consensus Charter and the citizen call to action, all of which shaped the foundational investments and transitional arrangements, can be found on the ESIC planning process website. Each document is available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.