Meaningful Engagement of People Living with NCDs and Mental Health Conditions

Create and sustain meaningful engagement of people living with NCDs and mental health conditions to build community resilience and participative decision-making.

Invaluable insights and active participation of individuals with lived experience

People living with NCDs have a right to participate in decisions concerning their own health and well-being. Lived experience is a form of expertise, and crucial to understanding barriers, identifying solutions, and planning policies, programmes and services on NCDs. Programmes that are co-produced with people with lived experience are more likely to be effective and sustainable. Meaningfully engaging people with lived experience in decision-making from design and planning stages through to implementation and evaluation results in greater ownership and responsiveness.

NCD Lab Cycle 4: Innovating PHC for meaningful engagement

For its fourth cycle, the NCD Lab welcomed submissions of innovative approaches to meaningfully engage people living with NCDs and mental health conditions by leveraging the primary health care approach. Submissions in this thematic area should demonstrate how individuals with lived experience are involved in the co-creation of projects, including at the level of co-design, co-production and/or co-monitoring. For example, engagement of people with lived experience can inform and sensitize primary care professionals, administrators and decision-makers as part of health workforce development. Community-led monitoring of primary care services and community-based programmes that engage people with lived experience can improve PHC coverage of vulnerable populations.

Possible submission types

Integrating health services

  • People-centred NCD and mental health services that put people and communities, rather than diseases, at the heart of primary care services
  • Mobile clinics, digital health or telemedicine, to facilitate remote consultations and follow-up
  • Artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies for improving NCD screening, diagnosis, monitoring and/or management
  • Collaborative care models that integrate medical, nursing, and allied health professionals to provide holistic and comprehensive NCD and mental health care
  • Strengthening integrated primary care for people living with multiple NCDs or living with an NCD and a chronic communicable disease such as HIV and AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis

Empowering people and communities

  • Engagement of people with lived experience in clinical decision-making, self-care and management of their own health and wellbeing
  • Recruitment of individuals with lived experience in professional and paid positions in the primary health care workforce
  • Leadership and empowerment of people with lived experience through enhanced health literacy
  • Strengthening community and home-based care through capacity-building of caregivers and family
  • Strengthening counselling through peer educators as a fundamental pillar of primary health care for all NCDs and mental health conditions
  • Culturally-sensitive interventions (e.g. collaborations with local communities to design and tailor interventions to specific cultural contexts)

Strengthening multisectoral policy and action for integrated PHC

  • E.g. healthy nutrition/obesity/substance use interventions in PHC

Submissions for the 4th cycle of the NCD Lab are now closed. Selected projects will be announced in September 2024.

Examples of Meaningful Engagement in Practice

How does meaningful engagement of people living with NCDs look like in practice? In this thematic area, the NCD Lab is looking for innovative projects that engage people with lived experience of NCDs and mental health conditions throughout the co-creation process, from design to implementation and evaluation. Watch this video to explore an example.

SPOTLIGHT

Join the Grassroots Innovation on NCDs Community

The Grassroots Innovations on NCDs community is a global network of innovators, researchers, funders, accelerators, policymakers and other key stakeholders committed to scaling up locally-driven solutions to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in communities and countries. The community is open to everyone interested in sourcing and scaling innovative ideas that help tackle NCDs from the bottom up. Join now by providing some more information about yourself, your work and your interests.

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Steering Group Members

Alex Kwok
Casja Lindberg
Kate Armstrong
Kate Swaffer
Liliana Tieri
Jessica Forbes
Mark Thomaz Ugliara Barone
Michael Uchunor
Michele Veldsman
Patrick Browne
Sita Ratna Devi Dudd
Shanthi Mendis
Svea Krutisch
Mychelle Farmer
Bianca Hemmingsen

Co-chairs