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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Aug 7.
Published in final edited form as: Vaccine. 2019 Mar 20;37(38):5754–5761. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.01.081

Table 1.

Priority research questions to achieve measles and rubella elimination. Questions were rank ordered by four topic workgroups convened as part of the Measles & Rubella Initiative Research Prioritization Process, 2016.

Epidemiology and economics

  1. How can programmatic data be used to better identify susceptible populations to target interventions?

  2. What are common reasons for under-diagnosing and under-reporting measles, rubella and CRS cases, and what strategies should be adopted to improve case ascertainment and reporting in different transmission settings?

  3. What are the incremental costs and benefits of prevention, surveillance, and outbreak response for measles, rubella and CRS, and the financial resources required to achieve measles and rubella elimination?

  4. What is the estimated public health impact of measles and rubella vaccination at the national level?

  5. How can data on population characteristics, susceptibility profiles and virus genotypes be best used to identify transmission pathways and predict areas and populations at risk for measles and rubella outbreaks?

Surveillance and laboratory

  1. Can vaccine safety, effectiveness, and/or coverage be improved by developing more thermo-stable vaccines and by alternative delivery methods (e.g. microarray patches)?

  2. How can point-of-care tests be optimized to have the maximum impact to improve surveillance?

  3. What innovations are needed to strengthen measles and rubella molecular epidemiology to demonstrate the success of vaccination programs?

  4. What are innovative methods and corresponding costs for CRS surveillance in areas with limited human and/or financial resources?

Immunization strategies

  1. What is the cost-effectiveness of interventions to increase coverage with MCV1 and MCV2 from 80% to 95%?

  2. What are best strategies to reach geographically and socio-culturally hard-to-reach populations with two doses of measles-containing vaccine?

  3. What factors determine the appropriate target age range, geographic scope (national versus subnational), and frequency of preventive supplementary immunization activities (SIAs) to achieve rubella/CRS and measles elimination?

  4. What indicators are needed to guide extent and timeliness of outbreak response immunization?

  5. What is the potential programmatic impact of microarray patches to increase vaccination coverage?

Demand creation and communications

  1. How can service delivery be altered to create and increase vaccine acceptance and demand?

  2. What is the effectiveness of social mobilization as a tool for vaccine demand creation for SIAs, and how can it be adapted for routine immunization?

  3. Are news and social media (e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook) effective tools for vaccine demand generation?

  4. How to design laws and regulations that result in an increase in vaccine coverage?

  5. What is an appropriate surveillance framework for measles and rubella vaccine behavioral demand and acceptance?

Abbreviations – CRS: “congenital rubella syndrome”, MCV1: “first routine dose of measles-containing vaccine”, MCV2: “second routine dose of measles-containing vaccine”, SIA: “supplemental immunization activity”.