Community engagement for a strengthened NCD response

Since 2017, Our Views, Our Voices has supported people living with NCDs to co-develop advocacy agendas at national and regional levels. In 2023, the Africa Advocacy Agenda was launched—the first region-wide agenda. In 2024, the Georgia NCD Alliance began developing the first national advocacy agenda in Eastern Europe. These agendas strengthen the role of lived experience in policy-making, anchoring advocacy in real-world priorities and challenges.

The fifth series of the NCD Diaries put a spotlight on equity and Universal Health Coverage (UHC), featuring powerful testimonies from six countries. Advocates shared stories of how discrimination and financial barriers limit access to care, while mechanisms to overcome inequities support people living with NCDs. These diaries—written, visual, and audio—were widely used in NCDA’s campaign efforts for HLM4 and featured during the 2024 Global Week for Action. 

Kenya and India were the first countries to pilot NCDA’s new equity assessment toolkit in 2024. Through Our Views, Our Voices and the Advocacy Institute, both alliances gathered data from marginalised groups, from refugees to LGBTQIA+ communities, informing national equity reports and advocacy.

This work not only highlighted systemic barriers to care but also ensured that the voices of those most affected were front and centre in shaping policy responses.

As part of the new Regional Advocacy Track, NCDA supported alliances across Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean in advancing regional campaigns and advocacy planning for the 2025 HLM.

Activities included regional consultations, use of NCDA’s Accountability Toolkit, and participation in WHO Regional Committee Meetings, where alliance representatives delivered strategic statements on NCD priorities.

Through Our Views, Our Voices, NCDA elevates lived experience in decision-making. In 2024, we released Five Countries, Five Stories, a resource capturing lessons from national alliances in Ghana, India, Kenya, Malaysia, and Vietnam on embedding people-centred approaches across advocacy, programme design and service delivery. It highlights that - while local contexts around the NCD burden and response are diverse - meaningful engagement of people living with NCDs plays the same crucial role in all countries of the world.

In 2024, NCDA launched the third phase of the Advocacy Institute, supporting NCD alliances in 20+ countries across three tracks: Seed, Accelerator, and Regional. This included training 61 advocates in coalition building and 40 in strategic advocacy planning, with post-training surveys showing a marked increase in confidence on key advocacy skills.

Grants and tailored technical support helped alliances in Bhutan, Georgia, and Cameroon lay foundations for national action, while countries such as Ghana and Kenya deepened their policy impact and public visibility.