Workshop report: Scaling Grassroots Innovations through the Public Sector to Address NCDs

Grassroots innovations have the potential to accelerate NCD prevention and control efforts by leveraging community perspectives and strengthen ownership of health interventions. However, identifying, supporting and scaling small innovations through national public health systems often remain a challenge. Many countries are missing the necessary policies, operational frameworks and capacity to assess innovations, engage with communities, and actively scale the most promising ideas.

On the sidelines of the 4th Global NCD Alliance Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Coordination Mechanism on Noncommunicable Diseases (GCM/NCDs) hosted a two-day capacity-sharing workshop on scaling promising NCD interventions through public sector support. 

The power of grassroots innovations 

Community-led, grassroots health initiatives that mobilize community knowledge and account for local contexts often prove more effective, equitable and sustainable in addressing NCDs, their risk factors and determinants. Where locally sourced innovations can be corroborated by evidence and scaled, they hold the potential to have positive impact at national or regional scale. 

Community-centred interventions empower health and wellbeing for people living with NCDs – regardless of their geographical location, age, gender, disability, or vulnerabilities. 

Roseline Kihumba, Helpage, South Africa 

Since 2021, the WHO’s NCD Lab has been providing capacity building and networking support to a global portfolio of leading NCD innovations through recurring thematic calls. To bridge the scaling gap between promising community innovations and sustainable government initiatives, the NCD Lab is currently supporting the development of a public sector scaling toolkit to identify and scale grassroots innovations on NCDs in meaningful and sustainable ways.

Supported by the Government of France, a related Francophone Innovation Project supports the development of the policy toolkit by providing key insights, evidence and recommendations from the context of Western African Francophone countries.

Scaling innovations through the public sector 

At the two-day workshop in Kigali, 25 participants, including government officials and representatives of community organizations from Burundi, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, and Togo explored enablers and barriers to scaling grassroots innovations alongside technical experts. 

Building on insights from selected NCD Lab projects and a recent literature review, participants mapped out the strategic components to scaling grassroots innovations for the prevention and control of NCDs through public sector systems. Access to funding and resources, reliable evidence to validate impact, strong community ownership, and early policy alignment and government support were identified as key enablers. 

Across countries, limited resources and funding gaps, and missing capacity within government, communities, and among healthcare workers pose major scaling hurdles. All too often, initiatives to support promising ideas remain fragmented, making it difficult to identify, engage and scale projects effectively

Engaging with communities and civil society, and collaborating with technical and financial partners offers governments a unique opportunity to understand to the needs of people population and implement innovative and effective health interventions.

Yannick Basile Emah Manda, Ministry of Health, Cameroon

The rights-based, people-centred focus of community-led initiatives and their potential to strengthen more equitable health programmes emerged as a key quality of grassroots innovations. Running proof-of-concept projects as government-supported pilots can help securing government buy-in, while supported grassroots innovations are also more likely to scale when they align national policy priorities.

A toolkit for scaling grassroots innovations

Takeaways from the workshop and the findings from the literature review will inform an analytical report and form the basis for the development of tailored capacity building tools supporting the rollout of the public sector scaling toolkit with government and community actors.

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