Multi-sectoral governance for health: a scoping review and typology development.

Authors

Matthew Aviso, Harvy Joy Liwanag, Amanda Low, Ali Alshalah, Emma Louise Willoughby, Jasmine Sayed, Natasha Howard

Published in

Health policy and planning. Sep 07, 2026. Epub Sep 07, 2026.

Abstract

Multi-sectoral governance is widely recognised as necessary to address health challenges, but approaches vary in different settings. We aimed to examine the representation and attributes of multi-sectoral governance for health in the peer-reviewed literature and develop a descriptive typology. We conducted a scoping literature review, using Arksey & O'Malley's method that included 34 articles for analysis. Most were published in 2020-25 (77%), used qualitative methods (68%), and addressed wide ranging health issues across all geographic regions. Multi-sectoral governance for health was assessed to be either single-lead (i.e. when one sector leads) or distributed (i.e. when all sectors share in governance). Single-lead multi-sectoral governance for health was further classified as: (1) deliberate, when the lead sector is clearly tasked with governing collaboration from the outset; or (2) organic, when the lead sector emerges as the sector naturally responsible for governing collaboration. Distributed multi-sectoral governance for health can be further classified as: (1) committed, when all sectors have sustained interest in contributing to collaboration; (2) flexible, when the involvement of sectors shifts depending on changing priorities and available resources; or (3) fragile, when sectors do not commit sufficiently, resulting in sub-optimal collaboration. Our findings can advance thinking on what multi-sectoral governance for health looks like, guide policymakers and other stakeholders to explicitly consider governance arrangements when planning and implementing multi-sectoral governance for health and recommend future research to explore how variations in types of multi-sectoral governance for health relate to its effectiveness.

PMID:
42703803
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Sep 2026.

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