The BESSI community developed the following principles aimed at improving BESSI awareness, research and implementation for pandemic preparedness.

 

The 7 BESSI Principles

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1. Ensure that research to develop, evaluate, communicate, and implement BESSIs are a key part of the global preparedness and response to COVID-19 and other infectious disease outbreaks.

2. Ensure that BESSI intervention development and evaluation is interdisciplinary and engages relevant stakeholders, including patients, communities, researchers from diverse disciplines, policy makers, planners and implementors.

3. Compare the relative effectiveness and unintended consequences of different BESSIs across settings and populations, drawing on the substantial variations in BESSI practices across the world.

4. Use a variety of research methods to inform intervention development; and for process and outcome evaluations, aiming to progress to large-scale field trials, where feasible and appropriate. 

5. Encourage multi-country conduct of key BESSI research across diverse contexts and cultures to build trustworthy knowledge about the ranges of generalisability and to reproduce generalisable findings.

6. Base the development of complex BESSIs on theory informed specification of target behaviours, structures and processes and detailed understanding of the barriers and enablers to those.

7. Give high priority to co-design of research with populations that unequal societies leave most vulnerable to both transmission risks and social and economic harms.

 

We are committed to building a collaboration that is global in outlook and participation, spans a breadth of disciplines and sectors, addresses inequalities and is based on translation of best evidence into policy and practice. Full statement here.

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The organisations below have endorsed these principles – if interested please contact bessi@bessi.net.au