CFAs: Improving Climate and Health Policy-making through Applied Systems Thinking

This call seeks to support a total of two research teams across selected countries to apply underused systems thinking methods to enhance national planning and decision-making in climate and health policy processes.

The Principal Investigator must be a researcher or policy maker based at a university, government agency or registered nongovernmental organization (NGO) working on health policy or climate policy research.

Objectives

• Apply systems mapping and analysis: Use system thinking and political economy mapping to identify leverage points and policy gaps within national climate processes, understand relevant policy, budget and planning cycles to enable the identification of entry or leverage points for change.
• Conduct structured participatory workshops: Apply systems thinking methodologies, facilitate engagements with policy -makers and sectoral stakeholders to jointly analyse climate and health system interactions and co-develop problem definitions.
• Engage in Alliance learning activities: Teams are expected to work closely with the Alliance and WHO to regularly participate in knowledge exchange activities and engage with global, regional, national and subnational stakeholders and other Alliance grantees.
• Demonstrate pathways toward policy impact: Develop a workplan, using systems thinking to support implementation of the identified priority policy, documenting the workplan development process along the way.

Funding Information

• Up to two research teams will be funded up to US$ 80,000 each. No additional funding will be provided beyond the project period.
• Duration: Research activities are expected to run for eight months from May 2025 to December 2025.

Expected Outcomes

• Achievement of this project will include the following immediate outputs:
  • One analytic report documenting the process of applying systems thinking in the development of the health and climate policy process;
  • 1-2 knowledge and communications products from each country team (e. g., published case studies, policy briefs, research article, short videos infographic ); and
  • Participation in one global convening organized by the Alliance to help share the findings more widely to encourage and inspire replication.
• The intended outcome of this work is:
  • Contributions towards demonstrable impact on an ongoing policy health and climate policy process.

Eligibility Criteria

• To be eligible, proposals must demonstrate the following:
  • The research team must be based at an institution located in one of the four target countries (Islamic Republic of Iran, Mozambique, Nepal or Uganda), with eligible institutions including universities, government agencies or registered NGOS working on health or climate policy.
  • The research team must demonstrate gender balance in senior project leadership and women comprising at least 50% of team members.
  • The research team must include at least one policy maker actively involved in national climate change or health policy processes, particularly in NDC development, H-NAP implementation or climate-resilient health system planning – with continuous engagement.
  • The proposed research must apply established systems thinking methodologies such as soft systems methodology, boundary critique, Cynefin framework, agent-based/viable system models and/or human-centered design, clearly explaining how these methods can facilitate the elaboration of national climate and health policy processes.
  • The research team must demonstrate capacity for multi sectoral engagement, showing plans to involve stakeholders from health, climate and other relevant sectors in the research and policy process.

For more information, visit Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research.