World Heart Federation

What and Where? 125 Days to Go

May 192011

Johanna Ralston, CEO, World Heart Federation

With 125 days to go before the UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs, our opportunities to ensure that the Summit is as strong and effective as possible boil down to a few key approaches in a few key places. Here in Geneva, where the World Health Assembly (WHA) is underway, increasing awareness among delegates is key; the WHA is an annual week-long gathering of health ministers and other global health leaders and stakeholders. In state capitals across the globe, we need our members to join forces across the NCD spectrum to ask that your Head of State or government attend the meeting in September. How? If you can, ask for a meeting at the highest possible level. Write letters. Publish opinion-editorials. We’d be happy to provide template letters and support you in your efforts.

In New York, our members and friends are meeting with UN missions to ensure countries are briefed and on board, building on the technical materials they are receiving from WHO and their own country health and development colleagues. If you are based in the US, reach out and find out how you can support these efforts. As WHO Director General Margaret Chan noted yesterday in a special session NCDs, while this is a member-state driven process, the role of civil society organizations – like our members and the NCD Alliance – are critical and, in her words, “New York is extremely important to get the political support and attention of Heads of State”. This means that while WHO’s leadership has been vital in framing the NCD issue and harnessing global expertise to address it, the 125 days that remain between now and the Summit must focus on ensuring a strong response by UN missions and attendance by the leaders of Member States.

What are you doing to drive attendance from your Heads of State or Government? Or do you already have confirmation that they will attend the Summit, if so please share this excellent news with us here.

Join our Twibbon campaign and show your support for the fight against NCDs.

report

Advocacy in Asia: Catalyzing Partnerships through Tobacco Control

UN Summit on NCDs No Responses »

May 102011

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Johanna Ralston, CEO, World Heart Federation

Just returned from an excellent series of meetings in Kuala Lumpur with the Asia Pacific Heart Network and Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology. Our members in the region are mobilized and active in non-communicable disease (NCD) advocacy leading up to the September UN High-Level Summit on NCDs, and we are especially pleased to see how the Summit is catalyzing partnerships in the region and how tobacco-control efforts have served as a foundation for current activities. In Australia, the leading heart, cancer and lung groups are supporting tobacco-control work in the South Pacific and engaging with their overseas development aid colleagues to request support for the UN Summit outcomes. In Bangladesh, tobacco control was a driver for a meeting earlier this week with the Minister of Heath, Dr. Ruah Haque, where representatives from our member heart society also requested that there be high level attendance at and support for the September meeting. In New Zealand, NCD Alliance messages and strategies (www.ncdalliance.org) are serving as a template for advocacy at key meetings with elected officials.

Why is this so important? Tobacco-control work over the past 10 years has shown that the disease groups most affected by tobacco including cancer, cardiovascular and lung disease are much more powerful when they join forces. Now that the agenda is focused on NCDs, lessons learned from tobacco control can and are serving us well in defining joint messages, sharing contacts and resources, and coming up with joint asks. The NCD Alliance has done an excellent job of building on this approach, and at the country level we are seeing old partnerships established by tobacco-control advocacy and networks like the Framework Convention Alliance, and new coalitions formed in advance of the Summit that are all building on this notion. There is nothing more depressing than wasted resources, often the result of lack of planning and collaboration at the outset of a project. Learning how to collaborate to advance the prevention and control of NCDs not only gives strength in numbers but also makes it more likely that when programmes are funded and policies made, they will benefit from the planning and collaboration at the outset.

Another surprise from the meetings? How much opportunity and interest there is from the cardiology community in being more engaged in tobacco control. A session on the global tobacco burden and solutions was well attended and there were clearly many in the audience who were just getting started in tobacco control.

How can we engage the cardiology community in tobacco control? And how can we ensure that the partnerships that are developing now translate into concrete results after the Summit?

international

Go Red in Red Square, Day 2: World Heart Federation Leaders Address Russian Ministerial Conference

UN Summit on NCDs No Responses »

Apr 292011

Johanna Ralston, CEO, World Heart Federation

Following Wednesday’s Global Forum in Moscow, the World Health Organization kicked off the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and NCD Control on Thursday with welcoming remarks from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who drew parallels between the Alma Ata conference on primary health in 1978 and this year’s UN High Level Meeting on NCDs in New York as critical turning points to in global health. US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius emphasized the priorities already articulated in the Lancet-NCD Alliance piece, while WHO Director General Margaret Chan reiterated WHO Global Status report recommendations including the importance of fully implementing broad based tobacco control and increasing physical activity (she even asked Putin from the podium to teach her to play ice hockey!). The opening session also featured World Heart Federation past president Pekka Puska, who called for support of the priorities within othe WHO Global Status report including tobacco control, salt reduction and other proven approaches to CVD and NCD prevention and control. Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, World Heart Federation board member and President of the Public Health Foundation of India, led the roundtable on tobacco control, and on Friday President Sidney C. Smith, Jr., MD, will co-chair the civil society roundtable. See conference sessions at who.telemarker.ru.

Challenge: how can we as the global cardiovascular and NCD community ensure that the interest we are witnessing in Moscow translates into policies and action in September?

Go Red in Red Square

UN Summit on NCDs 9 Responses »

Apr 272011

Johanna Ralston, CEO, World Heart Federation

On April 27, the World Heart Federation joined leaders from the noncommunicable disease (NCD) movement across the globe for the first-ever World Health Organization Global Forum: Addressing the Challenge of NCDs. Co-organized with the Russian Ministry of Health and timed to link to the release of the WHO Global Status Report on Noncommunicable Diseases 2010, the meeting brought together public, private and NGO partners for a promising and challenging dialogue around the global NCD agenda and specific plans leading up to the UN High Level Meeting on NCDs in September. As the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, cardiovascular disease (CVD) was central to discussions of prevention, treatment and advocacy, and World Heart Federation members including American Heart Association and Heartfile, played a key role. The Federation’s work with the NCD Alliance was represented throughout the meeting through presentations by members and support for the NCDA proposed outcomes document and Lancet article on priority actions for NCDs.

WHO Director General Margaret Chan welcomed meeting participants and noted the importance of working across sectors to fight NCDs (though the ban on working with the tobacco industry is “unequivocal”). In her welcoming remarks, Dr. Veronika Skvortsova, Russian Deputy Minister of Health, noted the commitment of the Russian government to supporting the goals of the meeting. Thursday and Friday will see the recommendations of Wednesday’s meeting brought to the second part of the week’s events, the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and NCD Control. With over 100 ministers of health expected in Moscow this will be a critical gathering of global health leaders and will help to define targets and plans leading up to the September meeting.

The World Heart Federation applauds the WHO’s leadership in working with colleagues in Russia to organize these key meetings, and in launching a report which supports the Federation’s mission of leading the global fight against heart disease and stroke, with a focus on low and middle income countries. The World Heart Federation calls for a global response that places NCDs and therefore CVD, at the center of development initiatives.

Many in today’s meeting called for strong and measurable commitments in documents which will be released later this week at the Ministerial meeting, many of which align with the new WHO global status report on NCDs. Mr. Sandeep Kishore of the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network (YP-CDN) also called for greater engagement with youth and young adults; “NCD’s are my generation’s HIV/AIDS,” said Kishore, and as the WHO report noted, the burden continues to affect people at younger ages, especially in low and middle income countries. Do you agree with Mr Kishore that NCDs are the new generation’s HIV/AIDS?

Link to the Youth Manifesto >

Link to the Social Mobilisation Site NCD Action >

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Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

What and Where? 125 Days to Go

Advocacy in Asia: Catalyzing Partnerships through Tobacco Control

Go Red in Red Square, Day 2: World Heart Federation Leaders Address Russian Ministerial Conference

Go Red in Red Square

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