Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face the double challenge of building resilient, inclusive, and equitable health systems while addressing a future landscape of increasing systemic crises, for example climate change related impacts. Ensuring resilient, inclusive, and equitable health systems for the Global South will require a combination of discovering best health practices along with creative innovation and experimentation to drive adaptation.
This International Development Research Center (IDRC) funded project uses a foresight methodology to identify signals of change that will have an impact on the future resilience, inclusivity, and equitability of health systems. This will be used to develop strategic pathways in a 10 year timeframe. Insights are expected to inform policy options, investment opportunities, and more generally provoke and inspire thinking on health systems transformation. The project will:
- Identify critical trends and emerging issues impacting health systems;
- Provide scenarios of change for health systems that provoke thinking and reduce blind spots;
- Develop a vision and transition / transformation pathways for health systems; and
- Provide a cost/benefit analysis of emerging and potential interventions in the context of long term change.
The study is focused on the regions of Latin America and South Asia. Ethnographic research will inform a focus on one country per region – which will be developed as examples (Mexico and Bangladesh). Horizon scanning (scanning for change) will be used to provide an overall picture of the dynamics of change across the Global South. The study will incorporate principles of gender equity and social inclusion through engagement with research cohort representatives who can act as journey guides, and who will anchor the research into the daily realities of the people who should benefit from the research (e.g. drawing on Participatory Action Research). In addition, the study intends to provide funders with a long-term framework for potential investment decisions.
Project Timeline
Feb 2024 to July 2025 (approximately)
Project Researchers
Dr. Jose Ramos
Gareth Priday
Dr. Karla Paniagua (Latin America lead researcher)
Dr. Anisah Abdullah (Asia lead researcher)
Dr. Julius Gatune
Aafreen Siddiqui (UNDP)