NCD Alliance

Access Accelerated and the NCD Alliance (NCDA) have partnered since 2018 to drive effective advocacy to enable NCD policies and programs that are shaped by people’s lived experiences. Access Accelerated works with the NCDA to advance its support to NCD alliances and advocates globally through advocacy mobilization opportunities, digital platforms, and capacity development programs that include seed grants, technical assistance, and trainings. Over five years, the partnership has strengthened the capacity of national NCD alliances, ensuring civil society advocacy efforts are strongly grounded in communities and the unique insights of people living with NCDs.

The partnership has enabled people living with NCDs to participate in national NCD strategizing and decision making. Advocacy and mobilization efforts have focused on positioning NCDs and people-centered access to treatment, care, and support as a top priority in global and national health and sustainable development agendas, including universal health coverage. With Access Accelerated support, NCDA has supported alliances to conduct national and sub-national level consultations, stakeholder mappings, focus group discussions, policy analyses, and community mobilization as part of strong locally driven advocacy campaigns. These advocacy efforts have contributed to a stronger NCD policy landscape in multiple countries. NCD Alliance facilitated policy change through people living with NCDs contributing to stakeholder and policy dialogues in Ghana, India, Malaysia, Kenya, and Vietnam. All five of these countries have fostered stronger commitments to NCDs in collaboration with various international, regional, and national stakeholders. The flexible funding from Access Accelerated allowed national NCD Alliances to pursue priorities under the UHC agenda, rooted in the perspectives of lived experience.

ACTIONS, OUTCOMES AND IMPACT IN 2022

Support from Access Accelerated enabled the NCDA to facilitate the meaningful involvement of people living with NCDs across Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Ghana, and Kenya in 2022. Noteworthy progress was made towards advancing comprehensive national NCD responses, in Ghana and Kenya, with an emphasis on putting people first. The development of Advocacy Agendas of People living with NCDs in both countries set the foundation for country alliance’s advocacy efforts. In 2022, the national NCD policy was launched in Ghana and the NCD Alliance Kenya secured significant external funding to support the PEN-Plus strategy roll out and implement packages for service provision, enabling the alliance to grow its advocacy work and contributing towards sustainability of advocacy activities.

In the second phase of Access Accelerated, NCDA trained over 1,250 advocates, 50% of whom were people living with NCDs or their caregivers, with a view to strengthening organizational and individual capacity for advocacy, knowledge to recognize windows of opportunity for policy change, and ability to support social accountability. Through this, NCDA is transforming local environments to keep the needs of people living with NCDs at the forefront. In 2022, these trainings contributed to the development of 34 commitments from a range of political aspirants, including members of county assemblies, national parliament, and governors in Kenya. NCDA’s trainings are having a significant effect on the creation of a cohesive and united front for NCD advocacy, where people’s stories and voices are expressed throughout entire project cycles — from design to implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Particularly noteworthy changes in 2022 include building momentum at country level for community-led monitoring and social accountability. In Ghana and Kenya, NCDA fostered community networks that train people living with NCDs to generate data on the quality of primary health services. Data is generated through community scorecards to capture perceived changes in NCD service quality, for example. Kenya’s social accountability campaign on NCDs expanded in 2022 to include people living with HIV, while in Ghana the existing scorecards, developed by the Ghana Health Service were used.

NCDA’s civil society trainings in 2022 built and shared the evidence on how NCDs impact other health agendas, especially UHC. NCDA started an accelerator program on NCD and UHC advocacy in 2020, and reached advocates in 10 different alliances by the end of 2022. Through Access Accelerated funding, the trainings provided enhanced local stakeholders’ knowledge on how to consolidate NCD action in the context of growing national interest in UHC. Moreover, nearly a quarter of the total knowledge products reported for 2022, and 31% of all knowledge products across phase 2, were produced by NCDA’s country partners. Several of these knowledge products highlight the relevance of NCDs for UHC and support capacity-building to advocate for this intersection.

The work of NCDA and the theme of meaningful involvement continued to gather momentum and resonate with global stakeholders. In 2022, the World Health Organization’s Global Compact on NCDs included meaningful engagement of people living with NCDs as one of its five main areas of action for governments. Access Accelerated support enabled NCDA to continue to mobilize and advocate for this topic at a global level, paving the way for participatory approaches to continue to influence high-level decision-making processes.

In the second phase of Access Accelerated, NCDA trained over 1,250 advocates, 50% of whom were people living with NCDs or their caregivers. In 2022, these trainings contributed to the development of 34 commitments from a range of political aspirants, including members of county assemblies, national parliament, and governors in Kenya.

Case study: Leveraging the power of communities for stronger NCD advocacy

People and communities are central to achieving longterm sustainable change — both because they drive change and because they can articulate the changes that are needed at community and health systems level to achieve accessible and equitable care. NCD Alliance (NCDA) works with communities to implement changes that are accountable and responsive to the demands of people living with NCDs at national and regional levels.

Such is the story of the NCD Alliance Kenya’s (NCDAK) work in Kenya where leveraging the power of communities has enabled multiple policy changes, supported by the NCDA. To ensure that people living with NCDs are part of the decision-making processes in Kenya, NCDAK facilitated multiple capacity building initiatives. The aim was to build skills and encourage people living with NCDs to articulate their experiences seeking care and to advocate for necessary changes relating to health financing. This has had a profound effect in Kenya, where multiple high-level decision makers are paying close attention to the needs of people living with NCDs. A most notable example of this is the work done through the Caucus of People Living with NCDs for Kenya’s National Strategic Plan for the Prevention and Control of NCDs 2020/21-2025/26, whereby NCDAK facilitated the meaningful involvement of people living with NCDs in the technical working groups that developed the strategy. The voices of civil society, people living with NCDs and communities played a pivotal role in changing the NCD landscape in Kenya, resulting in increasing willingness to listen to community voices across multiple levels of decision-making power — from county to national levels.

Advocacy enables change. NCDAK has worked to shift the enabling environment in Kenya, such that people living with NCDs are agents of change, gaining the ear and attention of high-level decision-makers. The collaborative approach of NCDAK and NCDA in Kenya influenced not only policymaking, but also decisions on financing and implementation. NCDAK conducted reviews of the status of health financing in six priority counties in the country to assess the level of NCD investment. NCDAK facilitated the participation of people living with NCDs in the Annual Development Plan — which sets out development priorities for the forthcoming year. On the implementation front, NCDAK is advocating for the prioritization of NCDs at the county level through social accountability activities led by people living with NCDs. Communities of people living with NCDs supported the creation of a community scorecard tool that incorporated monitoring of activities that respond to specific advocacy asks of people living with NCDs while accessing healthcare facilities. Activities included in the scorecard include the meaningful involvement of people living with NCDs, NCD drug and commodity availability and affordability, and perceived quality of NCD services.

NCDAK trains implementors in social accountability and the application of the community scorecard tool, so that they can track progress on NCD service provision against established national targets. NCDA’s impacts in Kenya point to the multiplier effect achieved when NCD action is community- and person-centric. NCDA supports through trainings and expertise, enabling people living with NCDs to think creatively about how they can advocate for their needs and priorities. With increased capacities, people living with NCDs shape agendas. The impacts achieved at multiple levels through NCDA’s work in Kenya also speak to the essential role that advocacy and leveraging the voices of people living with NCDs plays in driving change. In turn, this sets an example of the various ways in which people living with NCDs can be meaningfully involved in moving forward NCD dialogue, financing, and implementation.

CASE STUDY: Putting people living with NCDs at the forefront of the NCD agenda

Meaningful involvement of people living with NCDs in policy discussions supports the identification of barriers to progress and makes service delivery more responsive to the needs of those with lived experience. NCDA builds the confidence and capacities of NCD advocates so that they are empowered to contribute to the development of sustainable and human-centered health solutions and to advocate for higher standards of care.

One forum NCDA created for the NCD community is the Our Views, Our Voices digital platform, which was launched in 2020. This platform serves as a dynamic hub for resources, information, and advocacy to promote the meaningful involvement of people living with NCDs in the NCD response. The platform, also available in French and Spanish, features insights from various consultations with people living with NCDs, which can be leveraged to inform NCD policy and practice. It also offers various tools and resources for advocacy and to promote meaningful involvement of people living with NCDs, including the Advocacy Agenda of People Living with NCDs and the Global Charter on Meaningful Involvement of People Living with NCDs. The website hosts lived experience in written, visual, and audio formats, all amplifying the voices of people living with NCDs. The Our Views, Our Voices consultation process precipitated the development of the first Advocacy Agenda of People Living with NCDs. This global agenda calls for multilateral action to improve NCD prevention, care, treatment, and support, as well as respect for the rights of people living with NCDs and their meaningful involvement in decision-making processes.

The Global Advocacy Agenda of People Living with NCDs inspired nine national NCD Alliances to launch their own National Advocacy Agendas. These national agendas advocate for responsive and inclusive health policy reform similarly to the global agenda, but also focus on the specific challenges of their country’s health system and NCD burden. Thanks to the partnership with Access Accelerated, the community conversations and digital resources hosted by Our Views, Our Voices platform played a pivotal role in maintaining the momentum of NCD advocacy through the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on lived experiences during the pandemic, the process to build the Global Charter on Meaningful Involvement of People Living with NCDs was launched in early 2021.

NCDA’s work to put people living with NCDs at the forefront reveals lessons for the relevance of participatory approaches for advocacy. The various knowledge products produced as a result of this create connective tissue by establishing a clear vision of goals and exchanging ideas which support people living with NCDs and enhance community- and person-centric care.

NCD Alliance

ACTIONS, OUTCOMES AND IMPACT IN 2022

Case study: Leveraging the power of communities for stronger NCD advocacy

CASE STUDY: Putting people living with NCDs at the forefront of the NCD agenda

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