Giving Compass' Take:

• Approaching noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) with the full force of various stakeholders, government officials, community, and civil society organizations may be the best way to combat them. 

• What are the first steps to utilizing a sector-wide approach? What part will be the most difficult in terms of partnerships and collaboration?

• Read about the funding issues regarding noncommunicable diseases, and some innovative ideas to address this problem. 

Noncommunicable diseases, commonly referred to as NCDs — cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes, just to name a few — are the leading cause of mortality worldwide, responsible for a staggering 70 percent of global deaths.

The vast majority — about 80 percent — occur in low- and middle-income countries, making the prevention of NCDs one of the most urgent health concerns in developing countries.

Research indicates that tackling four key risk factors — tobacco use, alcohol abuse, physical inactivity, and unhealthy diet — can prevent the vast majority of NCDs. Effectively addressing those risk factors, however, will mean adopting policies and interventions that incentivize behavior changes for entire populations.

Finding and implementing effective ways to do this is a complex task.

While overcoming such obstacles is possible, targeted and strategic action is needed from many different stakeholders — including governments, donors, and civil society groups. Identifying the most impactful and strategic interventions, dividing tasks according to stakeholder expertise, communicating, and working collaboratively across sectors are key to success.

“Governments realize they need to be working with different actors — whether around prevention, treatment or access,” said Katie Dain, chief executive officer of NCD Alliance.

Many of the most effective, high-impact interventions require strong government leadership. While this is true for most health goals, achieving Sustainable Development Goal targets for NCDs — which include reducing premature mortality from NCDs by one-third, strengthening the response to reducing the harmful use of alcohol, and achieving universal health coverage, among others — requires the cooperation and coordination between many different governmental departments that often have conflicting goals and mandates.

While the private sector is not a monolithic entity and consists of different companies — including those responsible for making commercial products, and those in health care — it gets a bad reputation when it comes to NCDs due to lobbying efforts by tobacco, food and beverage industries to influence and discourage policymakers from implementing taxation schemes.

Read the full article about combatting NCDs by  Malia Politzer at Devex International Development