The accelerating pace of scientific, engineering, and medical challenges in today’s world demands timely, evidence-based guidance to address crises effectively. The National Academies have a track record of doing rapid, impactful work in response to emerging events and needs.

The RRESEM initiative is a cross-disciplinary effort spanning the National Academies and a broad range of topics. Its goals include identifying urgent topics where rapid input can make a difference; informing product formats and timelines that meet real-world needs; and creating feedback loops to ensure our products are relevant, timely, and used effectively.

The RRESEM initiative will establish a formalized process to identify priority areas where rapid guidance is most needed across health, environment, security, technology, and more. By analyzing emerging trends and threats; collaborating and engaging with stakeholders and key decision makers to align priorities with needs; and assessing issues for factors like relevance, feasibility, and potential impact, critical topics will emerge. In the meantime, a rapid expert consultation pilot project addressing H5N1 avian influenza or “bird flu,” focused on understanding current diagnostic capabilities and identifying strategies to enhance preparedness for potential outbreaks, will help to guide operations.

The RRESEM initiative is a new effort by the National Academies, supported by the Philip and Sima Needleman Family Legacy Fund, to create a scalable rapid response capability. It allows the institution to provide timely, evidence-based guidance on urgent science, engineering, and medicine challenges within weeks to months. This initiative will build internal capacity across all units of the National Academies to ensure a whole-institution approach to rapid response.

Historically, the National Academies have responded to urgent issues and priorities in an ad hoc manner, often constrained by funding timelines, staffing limitations, and more. The RRESEM initiative will strengthen the institution’s readiness posture, ensuring the necessary processes, procedures, and staffing models are in place to enable decision making and actions on short timelines.

The Philip and Sima Needleman Family Legacy Fund is providing the essential endowment support to launch the RRESEM initiative. This support covers startup and operational costs, allows the institution to take timely action before sponsor funding is formally secured, and demonstrates a long-term commitment to rapid response. Additionally, the initiative will help to attract co-funding and partnership opportunities by demonstrating institutional readiness.

The initiative is designed to be cross-cutting and flexible, addressing a broad range of urgent and emerging issues. Rather than focusing on a specific set of topics, it emphasizes looking toward the future and engaging with interested parties to identify areas where rapid guidance is most needed. This may span disciplines such as health, environment, security, and technology, to name a few.

The National Academies have a strong history of impactful work, including ad hoc rapid response activities. This initiative formalizes, embeds, and expands the rapid response capability alongside the institution’s more traditional capabilities and products.

The initiative is designed to be adaptable, with products tailored to the specific context and needs of each situation. Potential outputs may include rapid expert consultations (RECs), issue papers, expert convenings, literature reviews, fast-track consensus reports with formal recommendations, or assessments of policy options. Exact product formats will depend on what is most useful for decision-makers facing urgent challenges.

Yes. The National Academies will conduct a rapid expert consultation on H5N1 avian influenza, or “bird flu,” focused on understanding current diagnostic capabilities and identifying strategies to enhance preparedness for potential outbreaks.

Topics for rapid response activities will be identified through a strategic and iterative process that includes proactive horizon scanning to detect emerging trends and threats; ongoing engagement with a broad range of interested parties to understand evolving needs; and the application of criteria-based evaluations to assess relevance, feasibility, and potential impact. While the process will be structured, it is also intended to remain dynamic and responsive, thus ensuring the initiative can pivot as needed to address both anticipated and unforeseen challenges across disciplines.

Even with accelerated timeframes, the initiative upholds the same standards of excellence for which the National Academies are known; rigorous vetting, transparency, and neutrality will remain core to every product. This initiative will adapt key operational elements, such as employing more agile staffing and expert volunteer models, training and equipping staff with the tools necessary to oversee rapid response efforts, leveraging technology to move faster, and streamlining operations like report production. The RRESEM initiative integrates cross-divisional expertise, operational infrastructure, and agile methodologies without compromising the integrity of National Academies’ work.

The outputs of the RRESEM initiative are intended to support a wide range of audiences who need timely insights to understand existing evidence and inform decisions. These include government institutions at federal, state, local, and tribal levels; public health and academic institutions; non-governmental and international organizations; private sector entities; and the media. The general public and specific communities may also indirectly benefit from the guidance provided.

Yes. The RRESEM initiative is designed to be collaborative. Inquiries from agencies, funders, and other partners who share a commitment to timely, science-based decision making are encouraged. Collaborators can play a vital role in identifying high-impact topics, shaping product formats and timelines to meet real-world demands, and helping to ensure that rapid guidance reaches those who need it most. Early investment and partnership not only strengthen the initiative’s reach and responsiveness but also position sponsors as forward-thinking leaders in emerging science, medicine, and engineering issues.