HPSR pulse check
The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (the Alliance) is running a short pulse check to understand how the financing and institutional landscape for health policy and systems research (HPSR) is changing, and how people across the field, in different countries around the globe, are experiencing that change.
What we mean by HPSR, and by the financing and institutional landscape
For this survey, HPSR means research on how health systems are financed, organized, governed and used, carried out to inform policy and practice. By the financing landscape, we mean the resources that pay for this work – international, regional and domestic; public, philanthropic and private; grants, core funding and service contracts – and the balance among them. By the institutional landscape, we mean the organizations that carry out, fund, use and connect this work – universities, research institutes, government bodies, NGOs, networks and funders – and the distribution of work and money among them.
Who we are asking. People who work in or on HPSR – researchers, government and policy actors, practitioners, funders and others engaged with the field, in any country or region. There are no right or wrong answers; please respond from what you observe in your own work and experience.
Purpose, and how the results will be used
This exercise serves two purposes: understanding the field — aggregate findings will inform the Alliance’s work on HPSR financing, including discussions during the Ninth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (Cairo, December 2026), and may be included in a final report; and the Alliance’s own monitoring — the same aggregate findings, and the additional section for past Alliance grantees, feed the Alliance’s monitoring and evaluation framework and may appear in annual reports or other accountability material.
Type of exercise and time required
This is a global programme monitoring exercise via online survey. The core takes about ten minutes; an optional deeper section (about three minutes) and an additional section for past Alliance grantees (about five minutes) follow. The survey is open until 8 October 22 October 2026.
Voluntary participation and withdrawal
Taking part is voluntary. You may skip any question except your email address, and you may stop at any time. If you wish to withdraw after submitting, contact alliancehpsr@who.int by 1 November 2026 and your responses will be removed from the dataset (this is possible because of the participant code described under Confidentiality).
Risks and benefits
There are no physical risks. Some questions ask about the financial situation of your institution and the state of the field in your country – information that could be sensitive if attributed. We therefore will report only aggregate values. We will not publish any breakdown that could identify an institution or individual. There is no compensation for taking part; your responses will contribute to the evidence base on how HPSR is financed and what is happening to the field, which may inform discussions on the future of the field.
Confidentiality
Your name is not collected in the main survey. Your email, requested at the end, is stored separately from your answers. Results are reported only in aggregate — never in a way that could identify you or your institution.
How this works in detail
- Your name is not collected in the main survey. Your email is requested at the end for four stated purposes: to prevent duplicate submissions; to allow for the withdrawal of your response should you choose to do so; to invite you to future rounds or a short follow-up, if you consent; and, if you ask for them, to send you the results.
- On receipt, each response is assigned a participant code. Your email is stored separately from your answers, linked only by that code, and access to the link is restricted to the survey administrator. The code is what makes withdrawal after submission possible.
- Analysis is performed on the coded dataset with identifiers removed.
- Your answers about past Alliance involvement stay with your survey responses – we use them to check whether Alliance-connected and unconnected respondents answer differently.
- Analysed in aggregate means: no cell below the minimum group size of three will be reported; country-level results are reported only where enough responses exist, and otherwise described qualitatively; no subnational, institutional, or role-by-country breakdowns will be published.
- For past Alliance grantees: your identified answers are visible only to the Alliance’s communications and evaluation function, not to staff who manage grants or grant relationships. Nothing you say in the grantee section is used in any funding decision about you or your institution.
- Non-identifiable responses may be processed using appropriate AI-assisted analysis tools under the Alliance’s supervision.
- Coded responses are kept for future waves of this pulse check, so that change over time can be tracked. Your contact details can be deleted on request at any time.
Sharing the results
Aggregate findings will be published by the Alliance and presented at HSR2026, and will feed consultation reports as well as the Alliance’s annual reports. Nothing will be linked to you or your institution. Indicate at the end if you would like to receive the results.
For questions: alliancehpsr@who.int. Your information is handled under WHO’s privacy policy.
8 October 2026 Deadline extended to 22 October 2026.