Strengthening evidence to inform health systems: opportunities for the WHO and partners to accelerate progress on non-communicable diseases

The World Health Assembly endorsed the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) 2013–2020 (NCD-GAP), now extended to 2030. An evaluation of the NCD-GAP, published in 2020, found that research has been the weakest NCD-GAP objective in terms of implementation.

Implementation research, aligned with NCD-GAP, offers a pathway to accelerate progress in scaling cost-effective NCD interventions, demanding collaboration, stakeholder engagement, capacity strengthening and financial investment.

A renewed research agenda for NCDs is needed to answer the important research questions for resource-limited settings. These often relate to the social and commercial determinants of health, prevention of shared risk factors or management within the broader health system and how to implement integrated strategies at the primary healthcare level.

Contextualisation is imperative to translating knowledge into policy and impact. Research agendas should, therefore, be shaped by national and regional priorities.