Preannouncement: THCS 2026 – Transforming Health and Care Systems – Access to Care

The French National Research Agency (ANR) will launch a new transnational call for proposals in November 2025 under the THCS Partnership, which aims to transform health and care systems. This call will follow a two-step procedure—submission of pre-proposals and full proposals—and the evaluation of full proposals will include a right-to-reply phase. The call is scheduled to open on 21 November 2025, with a deadline for pre-proposal submission set for 2 February 2026.

The objective of this call is to fund research and innovation projects that contribute to ensuring equitable access to and utilisation of health and care services. Through the funded projects, policymakers and institutional decision-makers are expected to acquire the knowledge and tools necessary to implement resource reallocation as the health and care system evolves to meet new and ongoing challenges in a sustainable manner.

Subtopic 1: Universal access to health and care

Projects should aim to improve access to all levels of care, including in remote areas, through innovative financial models, service delivery models, and integrated interdisciplinary programmes. They should address disparities related to socio-economic status, geographical location, ethnic or cultural background, gender, literacy, and language, as well as limitations in infrastructure and workforce capacity. Actions may include strengthening health literacy, designing inclusive digital care pathways, and ensuring a better geographical distribution of services, including long-term care.

Subtopic 2: Reducing inequalities in the utilisation of health and care services

This subtopic addresses imbalances in service use—both underuse and overuse—which lead to inefficiencies and low-value care. Vulnerable groups often underuse services due to low health literacy, complex systems, and communication barriers, while overuse wastes resources and undermines care quality. Projects should develop strategies to promote appropriate and equitable utilisation of services by improving health and digital literacy, reducing financial barriers, and addressing gender and cultural inequalities. Co-creation with disadvantaged populations is strongly encouraged.

General conditions for application

Only transnational projects will be funded. The following conditions must apply to the composition of the consortia:

• the minimum project duration is 12 months and projects must be designed to be achievable during a maximum funding period of 36 months (for applicants requesting a grant from ANR, the maximum funding duration is 24 months); 
• joint research proposals may be submitted by applicants belonging to one of the following categories (according to national/regional regulations): 
  • Academia: research teams working at universities, universities of applied sciences, other higher education institutions, research and knowledge dissemination organisations or research institutes;
  • Clinical/public health sector: research teams working at hospitals, policlinics, medical practices, public health and/or other health care settings and health organisations;
  • Companies: private companies of all sizes;
  • Operational stakeholders: e.g. citizens and/or citizen representatives, local communities, schools, municipalities, local/national NGOs, consumer organisations. Operational stakeholders should be in a position to provide useful knowledge to the consortium, ensure the consortium’s research is useful and translatable to their (or other) organizational contexts, and/or influence decision making or create change within their organisations. Operational stakeholders should be engaged in the research process from conception of the study to dissemination;
• The consortium must include at least three (3) eligible partners from three different countries whose funding organisations participate in the call. At least two (2) members of the consortium should be legal entities from two different EU Member States or Horizon Europe associated countries. Each of these partners must be eligible and request funding from the respective funding organisation. All three legal entities must be independent of each other.
• Maximum number of partners eligible for funding is nine (9).
• Maximum two (2) eligible partners from the same country.
• The project coordinator must be eligible for funding by a regional/national funding organisation participating in the call.
• Maximum of two (2) collaborators per consortium are permitted, or a maximum of three (3) collaborators if one or more of the collaborators is an operational stakeholder. Collaborators are self-funded partners, i.e. partners that do not request funds from one of the participating FPOs (i.e. partners from non-funding countries or partners who are not eligible according to regional/national regulations of the participating funding organisations). Collaborators do not count towards the maximum number of partners.

ANR will exclusively fund the French partners (except healthcare institutions) of the selected projects, up to a maximum of 250,000€ per partner (275,000€ maximum if the partner is the project coordinator).

The Directorate General of Health Offer (DGOS) of the Ministry of Health and Prevention, also participating in this call, will support healthcare facilities (e.g. “établissements de santé”, “groupements de coopération sanitaire”, “maisons de santé” or “centres de santé”).

A two-step submission and evaluation procedure has been established for joint applications: pre-proposals and full-proposals. In both phases, one joint proposal document shall be prepared by the partners of a joint transnational project. Full-proposals will only be accepted from applicants explicitly invited by the Joint Call Secretariat to submit to participate in step 2.  

The completed scientific proposal must be submitted online on the call submission site (no proposal submitted directly to ANR will be eligible).

In parallel with the central submission on the THCS website, applicants requesting funding from ANR are required to provide administrative and financial information by logging into the e-grant System.

Scientific proposals must be written in English. Please note that the national/regional funding organizations may require additional documentation from applicants according to national/regional regulations. It is the responsibility of each project partner to ensure that all the necessary documents are submitted on time to the appropriate recipient.

Countries participating

Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.