Informing the world’s response to current and future global health crises.
About PERL
The Pandemic and Emergency Readiness Lab (PERL) is an interdisciplinary practice-oriented research and leadership lab based at McGill University. PERL brings together science, leadership, and convening to help societies, organizations, and governments prepare for and respond to health crises more effectively.
Our mission
To strengthen global and local readiness for health crises by advancing actionable research, promoting crisis-ready leadership, and building collaborative links across disciplines, sectors, and borders.
Our vision
A world where communities and systems are equipped to anticipate, navigate, and recover from health emergencies - with trust, evidence, and equity at the core.
Why now?
It’s always a matter of “if, not when”, when it comes to the next global health emergency.
The world needs to identify best practices for global health crisis management in the 21st century. Until all of us are safe, none of us are safe.
“War. Climate disaster. Pandemics. There is no room for wishful thinking. We know that global health emergencies will happen and that they require a preparedness and a capacity for response.”
– Dr. Joanne Liu
Our pillars
Leadership & Learning
We are building a pipeline of future-ready crisis leaders through a pandemic fellowship program, mentorship with leaders across McGill and the PERL network, and community-based learning grounded in equity and action.
PERL will serve as one of the world’s leading centres for training the health leaders of the future by:
- Leveraging an interdisciplinary approach to serve as a magnet for outstanding early-career scientists and clinicians from around the world
- Providing opportunities for hands-on simulation training
Science & Evidence
Our work focuses on five interconnected streams that strengthen how we anticipate, prevent, and respond to health emergencies, with a central aim of shaping policy and practice in the “post-COVID” era.
a. Pandemic prevention & risk anticipation: We study drivers of disease emergence and analyze past and present outbreak responses to develop upstream and downstream strategies that prevent future pandemics and emergencies in various contexts, including low- and middle income countries.
b. Policy, governance & crisis infrastructure: We explore legal, financial, and institutional frameworks including rapid response teams and surge workforces to strengthen preparedness and response systems.
c. Data & systems innovation: We aim to advance real-time, interoperable, and decision-ready data tools that support crisis monitoring and warning systems.
d. Equity & community resilience: We examine how structural and social vulnerabilities shape crises, applying an equity lens to strengthen system resilience and community preparedness.
e. Trust, communication & crisis leadership: We develop strategies to build trust, combat misinformation, and equip leaders with the tools to communicate and lead clearly, and confidently during crises.
Convening & Collaboration
We connect people, tools, and ideas across sectors through problem-solving convenings with international experts, technical advising, and strategic partnerships at the local, national, and global levels.
Together, these pillars create a lab that does not just study emergencies, but rather shape how we act before, during, and after they occur.
“One of the lessons of the Ebola outbreak was that you have to prepare for the future while the crisis is going on.”
—Dr. Joanne Liu
Director
PERL is led by joanne.liu [at] mcgill.ca (Dr. Joanne Liu), former international president of Doctors Without Borders and a global expert on health emergency response. Dr. Liu has coordinated emergency medical aid across the globe, both in response to natural disasters and disease, notably Ebola in 2014. As a member of the World Health Organization’s Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response, she also contributes to a set of comprehensive recommendations on pandemic readiness.
Deputy Director
Prof Prativa Baral is a global health scholar and an infectious disease epidemiologist with expertise in health systems resilience, crisis preparedness, and misinformation. She has advised governments around the world as well as the World Bank and World Health Organization on pandemic response and emergency health strategies, and has played a leading role in shaping Canada’s global health policies.