The 3rd edition of the Global NCD Alliance Forum will gather over 400 members of the NCDs community, including more than 60 members of national and regional NCD alliances. The Preliminary Programme for the Global NCDA Forum 2020 has been updated and is now available online.

The Forum, to be held 9-11 February in Sharjah, UAE, includes four plenary sessions, 18 workshops and various other events and activities. There will be pre-Forum meetings of youth delegates and People Living with NCDs and a Community in Action display of the work of national and regional NCD alliances.

Keynote speakers at the 2020 Forum include:

• Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman, International AIDS Society President-Elect; Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the University of Malaya, Malaysia
• Ms Brenda Killen, Member of the Independent Accountability Panel (IAP) of Every Woman, Every Child, Every Adolescent, Director of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement Secretariat, Switzerland
• Dr Ren Minghui, Assistant Director General for UHC/Communicable & Noncommunicable Diseases at WHO
• Dr Colin Tukuitonga, Director-General, Secretariat of the Pacific Community, New Caledonia 

The theme of the 2020 Forum is Bridging the Gap, between promises made to advance the NCDs agenda and the actual situation on the ground worldwide. Its three subthemes are:

• Saving lives through transformative policies and solutions
• Building demand for action through transformative social movements and voices of change
• Enhancing accountability through transformative and inclusive governance

Materials that will be launched for the 2020 Forum include ‘Pushing for Progress’, the updated NCD Alliance accountability toolkit, designed to assist NCD advocates to monitor, advise and report on governments’ progress on the NCD agenda. The ‘Civil Society Compass’ will guide civil society on possible actions it can take to close the gaps in order to advance on the NCD agenda, in areas such as leadership. The Compass is distilled from a new policy paper on ‘Bridging the Gap’ between promises and action on the NCD agenda, and will be released with the policy paper.

A series of micro-documentaries produced by BBC StoryWorks and NCDA, and the updated NCD Atlas of civil society initiatives and a paper on the social impacts will also be launched at Forum 2020.

Visit the Forum webpages for more information.