Executive Summary

The 2026 Global Interprofessional Education (IPE) Situational Analysis provides a contemporary profile of interprofessional education across 134 responding academic institutions from 36 countries in six regional groupings. The sample offers meaningful coverage of the current global IPE landscape and includes a larger proportion of institutions from the USA and Canada and Europe, where IPE has historically been more established and visible. Because the study did not use a probability-based global sampling frame, the findings are best understood as broadly reflective of participating institutions and visible global IPE activity rather than statistically representative of all institutions worldwide. 

Triangulation of the quantitative, regional, and thematic findings suggests that participating institutions are moving from implementation toward institutionalization, defined here as embedding IPE within formal governance, leadership, curriculum, staffing, funding, quality processes, and evidence systems so that it is less dependent on isolated activities or individual champions. Established IPE was reported by 68.9% of participating institutions, and another 15.2% reported a program in progress. Compared descriptively with the 2020-2021 survey, the 2026 findings indicate more established programming and wider use of competency frameworks, assessment, faculty development, and research involvement. These differences are consistent with field development, but should not be interpreted as a statistically tested trend because the survey cycles did not use a matched institutional sample and may differ in participation, question wording, and item-specific denominators.

The thematic analysis deepens and qualifies this progress narrative. Among implementation enablers (n=94), institutional leadership, strategy, and policy was most frequent (53.2%), followed by dedicated people, champions, and expertise (42.6%) and resources, time, and infrastructure (37.2%). Among implementation challenges (n=105), insufficient funding, staffing, and infrastructure was most frequent (55.2%), followed by scheduling, coordination, space, logistics (45.7%), and curricular crowding or alignment (34.3%). Growth has therefore not removed implementation difficulties. Instead, program maturity appears to create greater demands for coordination, protected capacity, formal leadership, curricular alignment, facilitator preparation, and sustainable resources. 

Research showed a parallel institutional pattern. Among research enablers (n=74), interested and skilled researchers or mentorship was most frequent (40.5%), followed by funding, protected time, and dedicated research resources (33.8%) and institutional leadership, priority, and supportive culture (28.4%). Among research challenges (n=85), limited time, workload, and competing priorities was most frequent (55.3%), followed by insufficient funding or dedicated resources (50.6%) and disciplinary silos, hierarchy, collaboration, or participation barriers (20.0%). The developmental interpretation is therefore neither simple success nor persistent failure. The global field has advanced, and advancement has shifted the work from initiating IPE to institutionalizing the educational and research systems required to sustain and improve it. 

Key Findings 

• Program development: IPE was established or in development in 84.1% of participating institutions. Nearly two-thirds of respondents to the duration question had offered IPE for six years or longer. 
• Structures and leadership: Centralized units and committees or taskforces were equally common globally, yet 19.5% reported no formal structure and 21.8% no formal leadership role. Qualitative findings reinforce the importance of leadership, strategy, policy, champions, and institutional commitment. 
• Resources and coordination: Less than 0.5 FTE was the most frequently reported staffing category. Institutional funding and no dedicated budget were nearly equally common. Qualitative findings identified funding, staffing, infrastructure, scheduling, space, and coordination as the most prominent implementation constraints. 

• Curriculum and participation: IPE was mandatory for all students in 48.1% of institutions and mandatory for some students in a further 30.5%. Participation remained concentrated in nursing and medicine while extending across a broad range of professions. Curricular crowding and alignment emerged as a leading qualitative challenge. 
• Teaching and learning: Small-group discussion, interactive lectures, prepared cases, and simulation were more common than workplace apprenticeship or one-patient care planning. This distribution highlights the need to examine how curricula progress from foundational learning toward authentic collaborative practice. 
• Frameworks and quality: Competency-framework use reached 76.7% and assessment 65.6%, while external review was reported by 27.8%. Competency intent appears more developed than independent program-level quality assurance, underscoring the need to connect frameworks with curriculum, observable assessment, evaluation, and improvement. 
• Faculty and partnerships: Faculty development was reported by 57.5%, patient or family involvement by 44.1%, and student organizations by 28.3%. Faculty preparation, workload recognition, and facilitation capacity emerged qualitatively as connected conditions for sustained participation. 
• Research and scholarship: Only 14.2% reported being very involved in IPE research. The qualitative findings indicate that research depends on skilled people, mentorship, protected resources, collaboration, leadership, data access, and methodological support, while time, workload, insufficient funding, silos, and weak infrastructure constrain it.

Developmental and Regional Interpretation 

The mixed-methods findings indicate that shared global priorities should be paired with locally tailored implementation strategies. Leadership, competency frameworks, assessment, faculty capability, protected resources, coordination, and research infrastructure are broadly relevant, but their practical expression differs by context. Europe and the USA and Canada showed prominent resource, scheduling, curricular-alignment, workload, and sustainability pressures. South America and Mexico highlighted curricular integration, facilitator preparation, institutional recognition, funding, and research continuity. Asia showed distributed needs involving leadership, collaboration, coordination, data, and research infrastructure. Africa emphasized champions, leadership, collaboration, faculty preparation, institutional support, and research expertise. Australia should be interpreted cautiously because of its small quantitative and qualitative response counts. 

These regional interpretations are developmental profiles, not rankings or causal conclusions. They identify where quantitative patterns and qualitative themes converge and where further inquiry is needed. Economic conditions, educational structures, policy environments, workforce composition, institutional type, and the distribution of participating institutions may all contribute to the observed differences. 

Practical Implications 

1. Global IPE development should focus not only on program creation, but also on
2. Competency frameworks should be connected to curriculum, assessment, accreditation, faculty development, evaluation, and continuous improvement. 
3. Protected time, dedicated staffing, sustainable funding, and administrative coordination should be treated as core quality infrastructure proportionate to program scale. 
4. Faculty development and facilitator preparation should be combined with workload recognition, continuing support, and leadership development. 
5. Scheduling and coordination systems are critical for scaling IPE across professions, curricula, campuses, cohorts, learning environments, and practice sites. 
6. IPE research capacity should be strengthened through mentorship, interdisciplinary networks, shared measures, data systems, methodological support, protected time, and funding. 
7. Regional strategies should reflect local maturity, policy context, profession mix, resources, and partnership structures, while regional findings with small denominators should be interpreted cautiously. 

Overall, the 2026 analysis presents a field with substantial momentum and an emerging institutionalization agenda. Implementation and research are supported by the same underlying architecture of leadership, people, resources, collaboration, curriculum, and infrastructure. The report’s value lies in providing a shared evidence base that helps institutions and regions understand their stage of development, learn from one another, and generate stronger questions for the next phase of global IPE research and practice. 

To read the full Final Report publication, please follow the link here.