Deadline: 16-Sep-2025
The European Commission is accepting applications for Implementation research addressing strategies to strengthen health systems for equitable high-quality care and health outcomes in the context of non-communicable diseases (GACD).
Scopes
- The European Commission is a member of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD). The GACD specifically addresses NCDs and supports implementation science to improve health outcomes. This topic is launched in concertation with the other GACD members (international funding agencies) and aligned with the 10th GACD call.
- Health systems in many countries have not kept pace with the rapid emergence of NCDs that require costly long-term care and treatment. Resilient, fit for purpose health system should provide high-quality, safe, equitable, accessible healthcare, that reflects the needs of the population, and enables the integration of healthcare across the care continuum, encompassing prevention, screening, diagnosis and long-term management of NCDs. While health systems across the world struggle with these challenges, this is a particular problem in LMICs that have relatively overburdened, poorly resourced and fragile health systems that struggle to cope with the burden of NCDs. Health inequalities (e.g. linked to geographical location, socioeconomic status, sex and/or gender, ethnicity, disability) are often accentuated by structural and/or systemic weaknesses such as lack of staff and appropriate medicines.
- The increasing burden of NCDs on healthcare systems has spurred a greater interest in exploring strategies to tackle these conditions, including a move from a healthcare system focused on disease and hospital-based care, to a more holistic model, involving communities and primary care, and focused on maintaining health. These include interventions addressing the integration of and access to care, screening, access to medicines and technologies, task shifting and digital health interventions. Implementing these strategies while retaining a focus on equity is challenging and health systems need to account for geographical disparities as well as reach communities that have traditionally suffered health inequalities. Equity in health requires that resources and processes are designed to promote equalisation of health outcomes for populations experiencing health disparities, to ensure similar health outcomes for all of society.
- Evidence for how to strengthen health systems to improve services and ensure equitable health outcomes is emerging, mostly from research in HICs. However, implementing equity-oriented interventions for transformation and/or strengthening of health systems remains challenging and largely unexplored in underserved populations, especially in LMICs. Providing evidence on implementation strategies that can enable effective adaptation and scaling of programmes will be critical to improving survival and quality of life as well as reducing disability, the burden of caretaking on (typically female) family members and costs of healthcare falling on households.
- This implementation research topic is therefore focused on strategies to support health system transformation and/or strengthening using evidence-based interventions in the context of NCDs that can be adapted to and implemented in LMICs and/or disadvantaged populations experiencing health disparities in HICs to encourage equitable health outcomes.
- The proposed implementation research should be focused on one or more evidence-based interventions (or complex interventions) focused on building equity-orientated health systems change to tackle the growing burden of chronic conditions, including NCDs. The choice of intervention(s) and provision of existing evidence of the intervention’s effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, sustainability, scalability and potential for long-term health and other impacts should be justified (and in what context this evidence has been generated). As the evidence underpinning strategies to transform and/or strengthen health systems in the context of NCDs is still emerging, particularly in LMICs, a limited period of testing the effectiveness of an intervention that the applicant’s team has adapted for local implementation is therefore usually appropriate.
- Applicants should explore the implementation of proposed intervention(s) for a selected study population(s) taking into account the unique social, political, economic, and cultural context(s) in which the study will take place. Applicants should justify why any adaptation will not compromise the known effectiveness of the selected intervention(s).
Funding Information
- Budget (EUR): 20 000 000
- Contributions: 3000000 to 4000000
Expected Outcomes
- This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several expected impacts of destination “Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden”. To that end, proposals under this topic should aim to deliver results that are directed, tailored towards and contributing to some of the following expected outcomes:
- Healthcare practitioners and providers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and/or those in high-income countries (HICs) serving disadvantaged populations have access to information allowing to strengthen health systems for equitable high-quality care and health outcomes in the context of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
- Public health managers and authorities have access to improved insights and evidence on how to decrease the fragmentation of care for patients living with NCDs and ensure continuity of care across all stages of disease progression, including prevention, risk reduction, and timely diagnosis of NCDs. They use this knowledge to design policies to reduce health inequities and to promote equitable health outcomes.
- Researchers, clinicians and authorities have an improved understanding how the proposed interventions for strengthening health systems for equitable high-quality care and health outcomes in the context of NCDs could be adopted in LMICs and/or disadvantaged populations of HICs setting, taking into account specific social, political, economic and cultural contexts.
- Communities, local stakeholders and authorities are fully engaged in implementing and taking up interventions that strengthen health systems for equitable high-quality care and health outcomes in the context of NCDs and thus contribute to deliver better health, improve quality of life across the life course and extend healthy life expectancy.
Eligible Activities
- Proposals should address all the following activities:
- Provide a research plan using validated implementation research frameworks or hybrid design research;
- Have an appropriate strategy for measuring implementation research outcomes and real-world effectiveness outcomes and indicators. Other health or non-health outcome measures, especially those identified as important by patient participants and/or critical for advancing Universal Health Coverage (UHC), are also welcome;
- Specifically address health equity and the principles of UHC;
- Engage an appropriately expert and skilled research team which can ensure a suitable multidisciplinary approach and that demonstrates equitable partnership and shared leadership between HIC-LMIC, and/or non-Indigenous-Indigenous members of the project team and external stakeholders through a clear governance strategy;
- Provide a stakeholder engagement strategy with evidence of support/engagement from key stakeholders for delivering patient-centred care;
- Ensure that project partners are engaged from the beginning to contribute to the sustainability of the intervention after the end of project. Proposals should demonstrate sustainability of the strategy, beyond the lifespan of the project;
- Provide opportunities for implementation research capacity building for early career researchers and team members from lower resourced environments, such as LMICs or disadvantaged communities;
- Ensure meaningful involvement of early career team members, including at least one early career member as a co-investigator.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from no associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call/topic.
- A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
- Entities eligible for funding:
- To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
- Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
- Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
- Countries associated to Horizon Europe;
- Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
- To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
For more information, visit EC.
