Forwarded from HSR Global Symposium on Health Systems Research
https://hsr2026.healthsystemsresearch.org/theme-for-hsr-2026/
==
Dear Neil,
Abstract submission deadlines for the 9th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR2026) are approaching
This year’s theme ‘Future-Focused Health Systems in a Changing World’ invites contributions that explore how health systems can adapt, innovate, and thrive amid global challenges and transitions.
Deadlines for abstract submissions across all four sub-themes are as follows:
• Individual sessions: 13 February
• Organized sessions: 13 February
• Capacity strengthening sessions: 13 March
All submissions will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee, and the Programme Working Group will finalize selections to ensure diversity and balance across the programme.
Abstracts will be accepted in English, the working language of the conference.
We encourage researchers and practitioners from all regions and disciplines to contribute to this global dialogue on strengthening health systems.
Submit your abstract today and join us at HSR2026.
==
HSR2026 will focus discussion around four sub-themes (detailed below):
Politics and Polycrises
Plurality and Partnerships
Platforms and Participation
Pathways and Planet
Subtheme 3 is particularly relevant to HIFA:
Platforms and Participation
Platforms are the structural foundations that support modern health systems, encompassing physical infrastructure (such as hospitals and primary health care networks), digital technologies, institutional frameworks and the social contracts that bind communities,
governments and health actors. This sub-theme explores how these platforms shape health system performance and resilience, inclusion and equitable access to healthcare...
We also explore the role of boundary spanners —individuals, institutions, and platforms that bridge knowledge and action across research, policy, technology, and communities— in bringing knowledge to action and negotiating questions of epistemic justice in the service of health system
transformation.
We invite contributions that examine how platforms— digital, physical, and social—can be designed, governed, and leveraged to drive equity, participation, and transformation in health systems.
Examples of specific focus areas under this sub-theme include:
• Governance frameworks for digital health and AI that ensure ethical, equitable and accountable use in health systems and improving health outcomes
• Ethical use of AI in HPSR including standards for evidence, transparency and participation
• Digital well-being and prevention of digital harm (addiction, misinformation, exclusion, radicalisation) and tackling digital hegemony
• Integrating and transforming service delivery approaches and infrastructure across areas such as primary health care, emergency responses, and balance of hospital roles and home care
• Social contracts as platforms for institutional coherence, inclusion, trust and shared responsibility
• Data sovereignty, privacy and citizen empowerment in digital health ecosystems
• Epistemic justice, knowledge for change and evidence to action
• Navigating fragmentation across digital, physical, and social platforms...
IF you or your organisation are interested to submit an abstract and IF you would like to include HIFA as an example of a multistakeholder platform for addresssing a global health challenge, please get in touch.
Many thanks, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org