METHODOLOGY: The secondary data from the Global Tobacco Industry Interference report, consisting of seven major domains of the TII index, viz. policy participation, corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, industry benefits, unnecessary interaction, transparency, conflict of interest, and preventive measures, were retrieved. A composite score was obtained after adding scores of different domains, for each year.
RESULTS: The findings of the study demonstrated an initial improvement in India's implementation of WHO FCTC Article 5.3, as evidenced by a decreasing score between 2019 and 2021. However, this trend halted in 2023, with data showing a slight increase in the score. When compared with other Asian countries, India shows marginal improvement in score than Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea. Some of the countries in the region, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Brunei, China, and Vietnam experienced a decline in TII.
DISCUSSION: There has been a rise in CSR activities, forms of unnecessary interactions of TII with policymakers, and participation in policy development; however, improvements are observed in providing benefits to the TI, conflict of interest, and preventive measures. In order to fortify the regulatory framework, it is imperative to create awareness among stakeholders on conflict of interest, denormalize corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives by the TI, provision of a watchdog for TII in the country and "whole of government" approach in implementation of FCTC Article 5.3.
METHODS: The International Society of Global Health (ISoGH) used the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) method to identify research priorities for future pandemic preparedness. Eighty experts in global health, translational and clinical research identified 163 research ideas, of which 42 experts then scored based on five pre-defined criteria. We calculated intermediate criterion-specific scores and overall research priority scores from the mean of individual scores for each research idea. We used a bootstrap (n = 1000) to compute the 95% confidence intervals.
RESULTS: Key priorities included strengthening health systems, rapid vaccine and treatment production, improving international cooperation, and enhancing surveillance efficiency. Other priorities included learning from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, managing supply chains, identifying planning gaps, and promoting equitable interventions. We compared this CHNRI-based outcome with the 14 research priorities generated and ranked by ChatGPT, encountering both striking similarities and clear differences.
CONCLUSIONS: Priority setting processes based on human crowdsourcing - such as the CHNRI method - and the output provided by ChatGPT are both valuable, as they complement and strengthen each other. The priorities identified by ChatGPT were more grounded in theory, while those identified by CHNRI were guided by recent practical experiences. Addressing these priorities, along with improvements in health planning, equitable community-based interventions, and the capacity of primary health care, is vital for better pandemic preparedness and response in many settings.