Applications Invited for Improving climate and health policy-making through applied systems thinking

About the Organization

The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (the Alliance) helps the technology and use of health coverage and systems analysis to strengthen health systems and deal with social determinants of health to contribute to important progress in lowering health inequities and attaining main international health targets. As a partnership hosted by the World Health Organization, we:

• Generate new and impactful data with nationwide policy-makers, researchers and communities to handle nationwide and subnational health challenges.
• Strengthen nationwide and regional establishments to enhance coverage and implementation through analysis and studying.
• Advocate for how health coverage and systems analysis can deal with international health challenges.

We deal with 5 main thematic areas that health coverage and systems analysis could make a singular contribution to enhancing health and health fairness:

• reforming health systems and companies to attain common health protection through a main health care strategy;
• enhancing health through digital transformation;
• stopping untimely dying and incapacity by tackling the dangers and determinants of noncommunicable illnesses;
• constructing health systems resilience and realizing co-benefits in response to the climate disaster;
• making use of a systems strategy to health emergency preparedness and response.

About the Grant

The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (the Alliance) invites proposals with the target to apply participatory systems thinking strategies to enhance nationwide climate and health coverage processes. This name seeks to help a complete of two analysis groups throughout chosen international locations to apply underused systems thinking strategies to boost nationwide planning and decision-making in climate and health coverage processes. The Principal Investigator should be a researcher or policy-maker based mostly at a college, authorities company or registered nongovernmental group (NGO) engaged on health coverage or climate coverage analysis in one of many eligible international locations: the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mozambique, Nepal or Uganda. The anticipated output of this work is an analytic report documenting the method of making use of systems thinking to a health and climate coverage course of (e.g., Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessments (VSAs), Health National Adaptation Plans (H-NAPs), Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), long-term emissions and growth methods). The anticipated outcomes are demonstrable affect of how utilizing applied systems thinking can enhance the design of a climate and health coverage course of.

Background:

Evidence continues to develop detailing how authorities inaction damages planetary health, undermining human health and growth. Several climate and health coverage processes (together with Vulnerability and Adaptation assessments (VSAs), Health National Adaptation Plans (H-NAPs), Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Long-term Low Emissions and Development Strategies) exist; nonetheless, regardless of some progress, the health sector is failing to generate adequate motion and usually doesn’t interact in these nationwide coverage processes.

For instance, NDCs are one of many key nationwide climate plans international locations have agreed to arrange, implement and replace as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement. A 2021 WHO health and climate change international survey report discovered solely 43% of surveyed international locations’ ministries of health contributed to their nation’s NDC. While many nationwide policy-makers are conscious of the climate disaster, there’s not all the time a deep, localized data of what this implies for international locations’ health systems and how this connects with different sectors (Quintana et all, 2024). Evidence generated at country-level to handle climate change usually insufficiently displays the systemic nature of the underlying interacting components (Kwamie et al., 2024).

Participatory systems thinking methodologies provide transformative potential for bridging this divide. Approaches like smooth systems methodology (Checkland and Scholes, 1999), boundary critique (Ulrich and Reynold, 2010), and use of the Cynefin framework can improve coverage coherence by bringing collectively various stakeholders to collaboratively outline the issue and construct options. Unlike systems dynamic modelling approaches which were extra generally used, participatory systems thinking methodologies stay restricted in coverage planning, notably in low-resource settings (El-Jardali et al, 2014; Haynes et al, 2020).

Building on the Alliance’s flagship report, Systems thinking for health systems strengthening (2009), and the work of its Systems Thinking Accelerator (SYSTAC) group of follow, this new programme seeks to apply participatory strategies to strengthen climate and health policy-making. Building on WHO’s climate-resilient health systems framework, this new programme goals to handle a important hole in applied systems thinking recognized in current analyses (Marten et al, 2020; Loffreda et al, 2024).

Objectives:

• Apply systems mapping and evaluation Use system thinking and political financial system mapping to establish leverage factors and coverage gaps inside nationwide climate processes, perceive related coverage, price range and planning cycles to allow the identification of entry or leverage factors for change. Systems strategies could embody, however will not be restricted to smooth systems methodology, boundary critique, agent-based modelling, viable systems modelling, human-centred design and/or the Cynefin framework.
• Conduct structured participatory workshops Apply systems thinking methodologies, facilitate engagements with policy-makers and sectoral stakeholders to collectively analyse climate and health system interactions and co-develop downside definitions. Plan an preliminary in-country inception workshop convening health system stakeholders, system thinking specialists and different key policy-makers, adopted by one to 2 extra workshops over the lifetime of the undertaking. The convenings intention to help contributors in collectively figuring out a related precedence coverage course of the place applied systems strategies can help and enhance efforts.
• Generate focused data merchandise Teams will produce actionable data merchandise to tell climate-health policy-making. Teams can be required to generate merchandise aimed toward decision-makers to assist enhance coverage implementation. These ought to embody coverage and technical briefs and displays in codecs appropriate for policy- and decisionmakers (e.g., conferences, coverage and group dialogues, briefings, infographics, peer-reviewed publications, movies and/or podcasts). Teams may even be inspired to make use of digital codecs creatively.
• Engage in Alliance studying actions Teams are anticipated to work carefully with the Alliance and WHO to commonly take part in data change actions and interact with international, regional, nationwide and subnational stakeholders and different Alliance grantees. Active participation in Alliance-organized occasions is required, together with two digital crosscountry studying boards (anticipated for May and August 2025). Teams are anticipated to contribute to a joint synthesis report evaluating outcomes throughout international locations and take part in a ultimate inperson workshop in October 2025 to current coverage suggestions.
• Demonstrate pathways towards coverage affect Develop a workplan, utilizing systems thinking, to Support implementation of the recognized precedence coverage, documenting the workplan growth course of alongside the best way. Show proof of both direct contributions to revised coverage paperwork or institutional adoption of systems instruments by health/climate ministries.

Deliverables:

Achievement of this undertaking will embody the next fast outputs:

• One analytic report documenting the method of making use of systems thinking within the growth of the health and climate coverage course of,
• 1-2 data and communications merchandise from every nation workforce (e. g., printed case research, coverage briefs, analysis article, quick movies infographic), and
• Participation in a single international convening organized by the Alliance to assist share the findings extra broadly to encourage and encourage replication.

The meant end result of this work is:

• Contributions in direction of demonstrable affect on an ongoing coverage health and climate coverage course of.

Funding and interval:

Up to 2 analysis groups can be funded as much as USS 80 OOO every. No further funding can be supplied past the undertaking interval. Research actions are anticipated to run for eight months from May 2025 to December 2025.

Eligibility

To be eligible, proposals should show the next:

• The analysis workforce should be based mostly at an establishment positioned in one of many 4 goal international locations (Islamic Republic of Iran, Mozambique, Nepal or Uganda), with eligible establishments together with universities, authorities businesses or registered NGOs engaged on health or climate coverage.
• The analysis workforce should show gender steadiness in senior undertaking management and girls comprising a minimum of 50% of workforce members.
• The analysis workforce should embody a minimum of one policy-maker actively concerned in nationwide climate change or health coverage processes, notably in NDC growth, H-NAP implementation or climate-resilient health system planning – with steady engagement.
• The proposed analysis should apply established systems thinking methodologies resembling smooth systems methodology, boundary critique, Cynefin framework, agent-based/viable system fashions and/or human-centred design, clearly explaining how these strategies can facilitate the elaboration of nationwide climate and health coverage processes.
• The analysis workforce should show capability for multisectoral engagement, displaying plans to contain stakeholders from health, climate and different related sectors within the analysis and coverage course of.

To be aggressive for this award, proposals can be assessed based mostly on:

• The analysis workforce’s documented expertise in making use of systems thinking approaches to real-world coverage challenges, notably in low-resource settings.
• The proposal’s embeddedness inside ongoing nationwide coverage discussions and clear pathways for influencing NDC revisions, H-NAP implementation, or different climate and health coverage processes.
• The appropriateness of proposed systems instruments for the nationwide context, feasibility of implementation, and alignment with precedence coverage cycles.
• The proposal’s potential for strengthening institutional capability past the undertaking interval.

How to Apply

Deadline: 5 May 2025, 23:59 CEST.

Submissions needs to be made utilizing the Alliance’s new on-line proposal submission type at https://www.ahpsr.org/CHsystems. Submissions will NOT be accepted by e-mail.

However, if there are any questions or technical help required, please contact the Alliance Secretariat on alliacehpsr@wha.int.

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