The Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD) brought together a group of international experts to guide members on future thematic areas for funding calls, focused on implementation science around strategies to tackle the increasing global burden of non-communicable diseases and mental health (NCDs).
The International Expert Advisory Group (IEAG) brings together expertise in non-communicable diseases and mental health (NCDs), implementation science, community engagement, health inequities and policymaking. The IEAG provided expert input on potential thematic areas for future GACD calls, taking into account members’ strategic priorities and GACD’s vision of addressing NCDs through a holistic, rather than disease-specific, approach. This includes strengthening the implementation of evidence-based interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC: as defined by the world bank) and among underserved populations experiencing health disparities in high-income countries, including Indigenous Peoples.
IEAG highlighted the importance of addressing the needs of women, Indigenous populations, rural and remote communities, disadvantaged groups, and other underserved populations. Equity is a core requirement across GACD's work and will continue to be well embedded within the GACD funded projects. The GACD continues to be committed to supporting research undertaken through genuine partnership among high and low/middle-income country academics, policymakers, local authorities, and community groups. Research questions should be driven by local stakeholders and other intended beneficiaries of the research project. GACD requires community-led approaches, co-design, and local leadership.
Experts emphasised that implementation research should adopt a systems perspective, addressing the interactions between health-system components and wider social, environmental and policy determinants, rather than focusing solely on individual clinical interventions. Research should examine how interventions can be integrated into routine, people-centred health systems and support broader system reforms, including those associated with global health architecture (GHA) reform. Key considerations include sustainable financing, workforce capacity, coordination across sectors and services, and context-specific pathways to scale-up and long-term sustainability. Policymakers need evidence not only on what works, but also on how interventions interact with existing systems, what they cost, and how they can be equitably and affordably delivered and sustained at scale.
13th GACD Call – Implementation research to improve prevention, detection and management of cardiometabolic diseases and obesity (2027/2028)
Cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) are an inter-connected set of conditions including type 2 diabetes (T2DM), obesity, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, liver diseases and related conditions. Increased understanding of CMDs as a multisystem set of related conditions, that are driven by a common set of preventable risk factors, and that can benefit from similar therapeutic approaches and integrated management, offers important opportunities for exploring strategies for improved prevention, key to improving population health nationally and internationally.
Key priorities include:
Life-course approaches addressing early risk factors for later CMDs, and prevention of obesity across the life span.
Improved access to diagnostics, medicines, and long-term care via optimising primary care and community-based delivery models.
Redesigning health systems architecture to sustain health over time by streamlining care pathways, reducing losses across care cascades, improving workforce deployment and productivity, and harnessing community and family capabilities to achieve sustained population-level disease control and co-produce health.
14th GACD Call – Implementation research at the intersection of NCDs and infectious diseases (2028/2029)
The relationship between infections and noncommunicable diseases is dynamic and extends across the lifespan, no matter what country we live in. Infections can increase the risk of developing NCDs (eg HPV and cervical cancer) and conversely, individuals living with NCDs (cancer, cardiovascular disease) are often more susceptible to acute infections, such as during the COVID19 pandemic, experiencing more severe disease progression and poorer outcomes. Preventive and therapeutic interventions (vaccination programmes, health promotion activities, lifestyle modifications, tobacco control, nutritional support etc) can potentially generate benefits across both disease categories. In addition, patients are increasingly living with multiple long term conditions including concurrent HIV; TB; CMD and mental health conditions, placing growing pressure on health systems. Strengthening integrated service delivery models and coordinated management can improve clinical outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.
Research Priority areas include:
Combined screening, vaccination and prevention strategies, where benefits span both infectious diseases and NCDs.
Integration of infectious diseases, such as HIV and TB, clinics, and NCD service delivery models that improve efficiency and patient outcomes.
Addressing the reciprocal relationships between infectious diseases and NCDs.
Mental health within infectious diseases and NCD integrated services and scalable delivery approaches using non-specialists providers.
Experts also highlighted the need for research on governance, financing, workforce models, and health-system resilience, recognising that many implementation barriers occur at the system level rather than within individual programmes.
15th GACD Call – Implementation research to tackle NCDs in environmentally challenging and changing climate conditions (2029/2030)
The environments in which we live and work play a critical role in shaping our health. Air pollution, extreme heat, and food insecurity can directly impact chronic respiratory disease, cardio-metabolic diseases, mental health and other NCDs. Weather related extremes including drought, flood, wildfires, are often a multiplier of risk factors for NCDs, including poverty, gender and access to facilities, exacerbating poor health outcomes. Implementation research to prevent NCDs can draw across sectors to harness the co-benefits from interventions designed and deployed to improve environments, reduce carbon emissions. lower pollution, promote an active lifestyle, support sustainable food production and healthy eating; as well those interventions deployed against extreme weather risk such as heat alerts, air-quality monitoring, emergency readiness and health system resilience. This call seeks to support Implementation research to tackle NCDs in the context of environmentally challenging conditions.
Research areas may include:
Heat-health warning systems and adaptation strategies.
Maintaining continuity of care for people with chronic diseases during extreme weather events.
Disaster-related mental health, and scalable delivery approaches using non-specialist providers.
Air pollution reduction, clean household energy interventions and improved respiratory health.
Food insecurity and nutrition changes impacts on NCD risk.
Cross-sector approaches to climate-related impacts on NCD risk involving housing, transport, urban planning, energy, and disaster preparedness.
This is a very broad thematic area with many evidence-based interventions currently under development. The funders and experts will continue working on the greater clarity of the call's focus, such as climate change, environmental exposures, disaster resilience, or broader environmental determinants of health.
Cross-cutting considerations for all themes
Across all themes, GACD emphasises a clear implementation science focus, generating evidence that directly informs policy action, scale-up and routine implementation, prioritising the equitable and sustainable delivery of evidence-based interventions and strengthening research capacity.
Implementation research across all themes may incorporate technological advances, including proven digital health and AI tools. The focus should be on their adoption, integration, equity, sustainability, governance and real-world effectiveness, rather than technology development. Digital technologies and AI offer opportunities to move beyond uniform approaches towards risk-responsive, personalised care, potentially improving health outcomes and equity while making more efficient use of limited health system resources.
Unless studies focus on a single sex or gender, researchers should design studies to identify differences by sex and/or gender in intervention access, uptake and effectiveness, and develop strategies to address any inequities identified.
Researchers are also encouraged to address women’s health, particularly gestational diabetes, hypertension in pregnancy, women's cancer prevention, household air pollution exposure, and opportunities to improve health across generations.
Please see specific considerations for GACD applications.
While all GACD member funding agencies have agreed to the thematic areas of these three upcoming calls, individual agencies will decide on a year-by-year basis if they will participate in a call cycle and may adjust certain specific requirements of the call to fit their own research strategy. While every effort will be made to move forward with the three call themes as described above, the GACD reserves the right to change one or more future call topics.
To receive updates about upcoming GACD funding calls, please subscribe to our mailing list.
Download the full GACD International expert Advisory group 2023 report.
Download the summary of GACD IEAG 2026 perspectives and recommendations (in preparation).
Would this content be useful for a friend or colleague?