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New advocacy tool: Key messages for Meaningful Engagement of People Living with NCDs, Mental Health, and Neurological Conditions
World Health Organization | 31 Jan 2025
A new advocacy toolkit assembles key messages for the meaningful engagement of people living with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), mental health, and neurological conditions. The messages were co-created and co-authored with people with lived experience and other key stakeholders from over 85 countries through the WHO Symposium on Meaningful Engagement hosted by WHO Global Coordination Mechanism on NCDs (GCM/NCD). The Symposium and its key messages will inform further activities in the lead-up to the 4th High-Level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on NCDs and beyond.
A co-created advocacy toolkit
More than 450 advocates with lived experience came together to share their expertise, challenges, and aspirations for a more inclusive and contextually appropriate NCD and mental health response. The newly released messages reflect the priorities identified during the first WHO Symposium on lived experience in May 2024, and refinements made during the Second Symposium in December 2024. Over a hundred additional contributions were received through a Community Feedback Survey.
Key messages at a glance
Building on WHO’s recent work to strengthen lived experience as a form of expertise, the toolkit closely aligns with the WHO Framework on Meaningful Engagement of People with Lived Experience and the WHO social participation resolution.
Listing twelve actionable asks directed towards policy- and decision makers in countries, UN organizations and World Health Organization (WHO), and actors in civil society organizations, research institutions and academia, the key messages call to
- Recognize the right to meaningful engagement
- Address barriers to participation
- Formalize and incentivize meaningful engagement
- Invest in strengthening and resourcing meaningful engagement
Informed by global, real-world lived expertise, the messages are designed to serve as a tool for stronger advocacy and engagement efforts leading up to HLM4 and beyond. They can be flexibly adapted to different national and regional contexts, and individual priorities.
