Durham, NC — 26 May 2026 — A new national roadmap is urging philanthropic funders to expand investments beyond biomedical discovery and into the broader systems that shape health outcomes. Accelerating Gains in Health through Research: A Funder Roadmap outlines a framework for advancing “health solutions science” by using an emerging, interdisciplinary approach focused on prevention, care delivery, policy, and the real-world drivers of health.
While the United States leads globally in biomedical research and health care spending, significant gaps persist in health outcomes, access to care, and equity. The roadmap highlights a growing consensus that improving health requires a more comprehensive approach that addresses not only scientific breakthroughs, but also the environmental, social, and policy contexts that determine whether those breakthroughs translate into better health.
The roadmap builds on insights from 18 national convenings led by a collaborative of philanthropic organizations working to strengthen pathways for health research. It also coincides with a new supplemental issue of the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst focused on advancing innovation in care delivery and prevention.
“Right now, we invest heavily in developing cures and biomedical discovery, but we still see gaps in health outcomes compared to other high-income countries,” said Dr. Tammy Collins, program officer at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. “Health solutions science drives evidence-based transformation of the policies, environments, and systems that influence whether people ever get sick in the first place—and how care is accessed and delivered when they do.”
Dr. Collins emphasized that the field is not entirely new, but this initiative is rather an effort to organize and elevate work that has often been fragmented across disciplines.
“This isn’t about building something from scratch,” Dr. Collins said. “It’s about bringing together research on the many factors that drive health: social, economic, environmental, behavioral, etc., and giving that work a shared language and visibility so we can better align funding and action.”
The roadmap identifies several persistent challenges, including fragmented funding, limited incentives for prevention-focused research, and the difficulty of measuring outcomes tied to interventions that prevent illness rather than treat it. As a result, many promising approaches fail to scale or receive sustained investment.
“Prevention and system-level improvements are harder to measure, and they take time,” Dr. Collins noted. “It’s not always easy to quantify what didn’t happen, like a disease that never developed, but at the population level, those impacts are real and significant.”
Philanthropy, the roadmap argues, is uniquely positioned to address these challenges by supporting long-term, cross-sector efforts that may not attract traditional funding. The report encourages funders to invest in implementation science, strengthen care delivery systems, support policy-relevant research, and build partnerships with communities and diverse institutions.
As part of this broader effort, Dr. Collins is contributing to a working group aimed at supporting exemplar projects in health solutions science, with the goal of advancing the field and demonstrating scalable impact.
“In large part, this is about ensuring that what we already know can improve health actually reaches people,” Dr. Collins said. “If we can better connect research to real-world systems and conditions, we have an opportunity to make meaningful progress on prevention, equity, and health outcomes at scale.”
The roadmap will be highlighted at a national convening of funders and partners to catalyze broader investment and coordination across the field.
For more information and to access the full roadmap, visit Accelerating Gains in Health through Research: A Funder Roadmap
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