Policy-makers from China, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Japan and South Africa gathered for the second meeting of the Alliance Policy-maker Forum in June 2025. This event built on the momentum from the inaugural meeting held in October 2024, continuing the Alliance’s commitment to convening spaces to strengthen evidence-informed health policy through cross-country dialogue and collaboration.
The Forum brings together a diverse group of senior health policy-makers representing a range of health systems. But they are all confronting common challenges: strengthening governance, improving institutional processes, addressing threats and resource constraints, and translating ambitious national policies into local impact. Across contexts, participants saw the Forum as a vital platform to share experiences, challenge assumptions and co-develop solutions.
A strong emphasis emerged on the role of subnational-level action, which participants described as the “engine room” of health systems, where policies meet communities and the reality of health delivery unfolds. Several participants questioned top-down models of health governance, urging a rebalancing toward local and community-level perspectives. “If it is important for the community, they will find a solution,” said Dr Rajeev Sadanandan, CEO of the Health Transformation Platform in India. “The framing of health has to move from the national to the communities”.
These views sparked thoughtful debate. Dr Johanna Hanefeld of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute agreed but cautioned against overlooking national-level processes: “While health policy and systems research should be rooted in communities, the Forum itself cannot be community-led alone. Multilateralism and national-level coordination remain essential”.
The Forum’s participants also recognized the rapidly evolving landscape of global health financing. “The abundance of development assistance for health we once had will never return,” warned Dr Hajime Inoue of Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. As aid flows diminish, policy-makers called for stronger domestic resource mobilization and more efficient spending.
Dr Zhou Wenjun, Principal, Division of Policy Research at China’s National Health Commission emphasized the need to increase public funding for health services, especially at grassroots and community levels. She also urged greater attention to digital health innovations such as artificial intelligence and telemedicine to enhance access and system capacity.
Climate change was another key theme, brought into the conversation by external experts who attended the Forum virtually, broadening the dialogue to include emerging global challenges. Dr Sunita Narain, Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment in India, emphasized the urgency of making climate’s health impacts immediate and tangible to galvanize policy action at both policy and community levels. Dr Tamer Rabie, Global Programme Lead for Climate and Health at the World Bank added to this sentiment arguing that the discourse around climate change needs fundamental reframing, from abstract scientific language to stories that resonate, focusing on visible and relatable impacts like floods, heatwaves and wildfires.
Throughout the two-day Forum, the importance of trust and openness within collaborative networks was a recurring theme. Dr Kumanan Rasanathan, Executive Director of the Alliance, described the Forum as “a platform where policy-makers from diverse regions can co-create knowledge, challenge assumptions and find collective ways to tackle health system challenges”.
Looking ahead, having validated the relevance of the Forum in a changing global landscape, Forum members will next begin to cascade activities into their own settings, while the Forum continues to expand to include policy-makers from other countries. As the Forum closed, Dr Keith Cloete summarized this spirit, stating that: “Impediments are what stand in the way of our collective action, but on the other side is our individual agency, and our passion for it”.