Advancing health policy and systems research and analysis: new frontiers, renewed relevance

Health systems are at a crossroads. Globally, health systems are straining under the weight of responding to persistent and emergent challenges. Uncertainties in health financing, service delivery, new technologies and disease burdens are hindering health systems abilities to maximize collective and scaled action to achieve health equity and social justice. In March 2025, a group of health policy and systems experts were convened by an organization, to consider the 'new frontiers' of the field in the context of shifting global and national landscapes. Deliberations centred on the critique that health policy and systems research (HPSR) need to restate its core foundations, better articulate its impacts in real health systems and policy processes, while defining its role within or apart from 'global health'. Six frontiers were identified: new institutional forms of HPSR beyond academic settings; more fully theorized and hypothesized studies that go beyond descriptive; more applies systems thinking; new educational models to support analysis, networking and systems leadership; more domestic financing for HPSR; and genuine engagement with a new set of health system development actors. For HPSR to remain relevant, strengthening the science and practice of how diverse actors engage to bring about collective action for health equity and social justice is imperative. The current global geopolitical, financing, and planetary shifts, while critical, present an opportunity for these new frontiers in HPSR to deepen the impact of the field.