The Advocacy Institute, NCD Alliance’s flagship Capacity Development initiative, aims to support coalition building and advocacy efforts across priority geographies, through its Seed and Accelerator programmes.

From 2021, the Advocacy Institute is being expanded to include a set of additional geographies in its Seed programme as well as in its thematic NCDs and UHC Accelerator programme. In addition, a new thematic NCD Prevention Accelerator Programme is being launched.

After the success of the Advocacy Institute’s first phase supporting 14 NCD alliances (2017-2019; read more here), a second phase started in 2020. A new Seed Programme focused on promoting and supporting 3 NCD alliances in their coalition building efforts and in establishing the foundations for effective NCD advocacy, and a new thematic NCDs and UHC Accelerator focused on supporting 10 national NCD alliances to drive effective in-country advocacy on NCDs and UHC.

In 2021, thanks to NCDA’s new partnerships with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), the Advocacy Institute is being expanded to support a new set of national NCD alliances. These geographies and alliances were selected based on an extensive scoping exercise undertaken between December 2020 and February 2021, with desk research and interviews, assessing country landscape and need, civil society capacity, as well as opportunities for NCD advocacy. This exercise served to inform the expansion of the Seed and NCDs and UHC Accelerator programmes, and the launch of a new thematic NCD Prevention Accelerator Programme.

Thanks to NCDA’s partnership with Norad, alliances in Ethiopia and Ghana were invited to join the NCDs and UHC Accelerator Programme, while the alliance in Ghana was also invited to join the NCD Prevention Accelerator Programme. Thanks to NCDA’s partnership with Sida, alliances from three Least Developed Countries (Bangladesh, Nepal and Senegal) were invited to join the Seed Programme, and three national alliances in India, Mexico and Philippines were invited to join the NCD Prevention Accelerator Programme.

Particularly, the NCD Prevention Accelerator Programme will support strategic advocacy for effective policy response to specific NCD risk factors. The Ghana NCD Alliance and the Mexico Salud-Hable Coalition will conduct advocacy on alcohol control, promoting progress towards national regulations.

The Healthy India Alliance will conduct landscape analysis and undertake strategic action to promote air pollution policies and address its intersections with NCDs. And the Healthy Philippines Alliance will also conduct landscape analysis and advocacy efforts to position food policies as part of broader NCD and UHC policies.

The alliances part of the Advocacy Institute have access to multi-year grant funding and are offered tailored technical support and training opportunities. The second phase of the Advocacy Institute will run until early 2023.

To learn more about the Advocacy Institute, the associated programmes and participating countries, please visit our website here.