Knowledge Translation and the Politics of Evidence in Swiss Health System Decision-Making

Natalie Messerli is a health systems and policy researcher working at the intersection of knowledge

translation, systems thinking, and liberatory practice. Her research explores how Learning Health

Systems (LHS) can move beyond generating evidence to redistributing power, surfacing diverse

knowledge systems, reframing what counts as evidence, and weaving justice into the everyday

processes of learning, care, and politics.

Through her projects, she examines how infrastructure can be reimagined to advance equity and

engagement. This includes evaluating the SLHS as a national-level LHS training program, mapping

Switzerland’s health evidence ecosystem, co-developing a democratized health equity curriculum, and using participatory systems thinking to co-create community-informed care pathways. These projects suggest that a system’s ability to learn benefits

from infrastructure that supports community-embedded, transdisciplinary approaches and amplifies

diverse forms of knowledge in decision-making spaces. However, their transformative potential is

shaped by how power is shared and enacted within these systems.

In addition to the doctoral work in Switzerland, this research was expanded internationally by

studying transformative learning and democratized health equity curricula to advance LHS in other

contexts. Insights from these explorations inform her doctoral thesis and future research, with the

aim of cultivating health systems that are inclusive, adaptive, and equitable.

Her research is reflexive, relational, and justice-oriented, grounded in the belief that knowledge

can be a collective practice of care and transformation.