Small populations share distinctive challenges that can shape both health and research, including small sample sizes, limited specialist workforces, centralised services, transport dependency, constrained research capacity and greater vulnerability to external shocks. These factors can also reduce their visibility and competitiveness within larger international research agendas.

At the same time, small populations offer important advantages. Whole-population approaches, linked data, close researcher–policy relationships and clearly defined populations can create valuable settings for innovation and population-level evaluation.

ISPHN brings these settings together to turn shared challenges into opportunities for stronger comparative research, collaboration and policy-relevant evidence.

Researchers working with small populations may encounter similar methodological, infrastructural and policy challenges while working in very different geographical settings.

Yet expertise and evidence are often dispersed across countries, islands and regions.

ISPHN provides a structured international community through which researchers can connect, share expertise and develop collaborative research rather than working in isolation.

By bringing together researchers working across different small-population settings, the network aims to identify common challenges, share methodological solutions, strengthen comparative research and increase the international visibility of population health research conducted in smaller jurisdictions.

ISPHN welcomes participation from researchers and professionals working with or studying:

• Small countries and states
• Island populations and archipelagos
• Remote and rural populations
• Northern, Arctic and other geographically peripheral populations
• Geographically isolated or bounded communities
• Small subnational regions with distinctive population-health or health-system characteristics

The network is deliberately multidisciplinary and welcomes expertise from epidemiology, public health, medicine, health services research, health policy, statistics, data science, environmental health, health economics, social sciences and related disciplines.

Participation is not limited to researchers physically based within small-population settings. Researchers whose work contributes relevant methodological expertise, comparative evidence or collaboration with small populations are also encouraged to engage.

ISPHN aims to facilitate collaboration across areas where population size and geographical context influence health, research and health-system functioning. Areas of interest include:

1. Population health and epidemiology
   Understanding disease patterns, risk factors, inequalities and health trajectories within small populations.
2. Data and methodology
   Developing and sharing approaches for small samples, whole-population studies, data linkage, registries, longitudinal research and comparative analyses.
3. Health systems and workforce
   Exploring specialist workforce limitations, centralisation of services, access to care, referral pathways and the sustainability of specialised services.
4. Resilience, sustainability and preparedness
   Examining how small populations respond to pandemics, environmental events, supply-chain disruption, workforce shortages and other external shocks.
5. Prevention and non-communicable diseases
   Strengthening evidence and collaboration around cardiometabolic health, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and other major population-health priorities.
6. Health inequalities and determinants of health
   Understanding how socioeconomic, geographical, environmental and structural factors influence health within small populations.
7. Policy translation and population-level intervention
   Using the close relationship between evidence, health systems and policymakers in many small settings to evaluate how research can translate into population-level action.

The network aims to create opportunities for members to:

• Identify researchers and institutions working with small populations internationally
• Map existing evidence, datasets and research expertise
• Identify shared research gaps and methodological challenges
• Develop cross-country and cross-jurisdictional comparative studies
• Share methodological expertise and good practice
• Support collaboration between established and early-career researchers
• Develop joint publications, workshops and scientific activities
• Build multidisciplinary and international research teams
• Strengthen the visibility of small-population health research
• Develop collaborative applications for international research funding
• Create stronger links between research, policy and public health practice

A central objective of ISPHN is to move from isolated studies of individual small populations towards a connected international research community.

Comparing small populations across different geographical, socioeconomic and health-system contexts can help distinguish challenges that are locally specific from those that arise through shared structural characteristics associated with small population size.

This creates opportunities not simply to study small populations, but to use them to generate broader insights into population health, health-system resilience, prevention, preparedness and policy implementation.

ISPHN is currently developing its international network of collaborators and identifying researchers, institutions and population settings that could contribute to its activities.

An important next step will be the development of a proposed COST Action, creating a European and international platform through which researchers can collaborate, exchange knowledge, strengthen research capacity and develop future comparative research.

Through this process, ISPHN aims to establish a sustainable network capable of supporting new collaborations, early-career researchers, methodological development and larger international research initiatives.