BACKGROUND:
Implementation science in global health has largely evolved within epistemic and institutional frameworks shaped by colonial legacies. These include unequal power relations, dominance of positivist and technocratic approaches, and marginalisation of community knowledge and socio-political context. As a result, implementation science is often reduced to a technical exercise focused on efficiency and measurable outcomes, rather than equity, justice, and lived realities—particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

METHODS:
This paper adopts a critical, normative analysis of implementation science literature, global health practice, and ethics guidance, drawing on political economy, decolonial scholarship, and applied public health ethics. It synthesises evidence from global health programmes and policy experiences, including publicly financed health reforms in LMICs, to examine how colonial epistemic hierarchies shape implementation priorities, methodologies, and outcomes. Building on this analysis, the paper develops an ethics-framed conceptual model for implementation planning.

RESULTS:
The analysis identifies persistent structural and epistemic inequities within implementation science, including extractive research practices, inequitable partnerships, and limited engagement with social and political determinants of health. To address these gaps, the paper articulates six ethical imperatives for decolonising implementation research: socially legitimate science, community co-production, equitable partnerships, contextual sensitivity, epistemic and social justice, and ethical data stewardship. These imperatives are operationalised through a five-stage ethics-informed implementation planning cycle that integrates ethical reflection into problem framing, co-design, implementation, evaluation, and reciprocal learning.

CONCLUSIONS:
Embedding ethics as the organising principle of implementation science—rather than a procedural add-on—can reposition the field as a tool for social justice and health equity. An ethics-informed planning cycle enables implementation science to move beyond colonial and technocratic logics, restoring voice, agency, dignity, and accountability to the communities it seeks to serve.