Through concerted and collaborative action to address NCDs, the global health community, including the innovative pharmaceutical industry, can contribute to global health progress, improve lives, and regain the momentum we need for action on NCDs.

In the short time left on the road to 2025, when global stakeholders will report back on progress to reduce NCDs by 25% at the UN High-level Meeting on NCDs, the global health community still has a lot of work to do to reduce the NCDs disease burden. Only by sharing our unique and collective expertise, ensuring coordination, and building meaningful, solution-oriented partnerships will we be able to strengthen and build resilient health systems, and offer better care to people living with NCDs.

In the spirit of the Global Week for Action on NCDs, this report reiterates the long-standing commitment of the innovative pharmaceutical industry to bring innovative solutions, bridge the NCDs care gap, and accelerate Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The report builds upon IFPMA’s Framework for Action for the Prevention and Control of NCDs, launched in 2011 and revised in 2015. It outlines four interconnected fronts that guide the innovative pharmaceutical industry’s action on NCDs:

• Innovation: Investing in the discovery of new medicines and vaccines to prevent and fight disease.
• Availability: Promoting policies that drive expanded access to care.
• Empowerment of people living with NCDs: Ensuring the design and implementation of policy solutions are co-created with people living with NCDs.
• Capacity building: Working with health systems and their funders to build capacity that can effectively prevent, diagnose, treat, and manage life-long conditions.

Policy recommendations

Progress depends on creating enabling collaborations and investments that prioritize overcoming the gaps and challenges likely to offer the biggest returns in our collective efforts to achieving global goals for NCDs and UHC in all countries around the world. Our industry puts forward the following policy recommendations:

• Foster an enabling environment for innovation and access to thrive: Ensure policies and regulations are in place to promote innovation, support clinical trials, and improve access to medicines and vaccines.
• Improve data generation and analysis of the NCD burden to leave no one behind: Improve data systems and analysis of the NCD burden at global, regional, and national levels to identify and treat all people living with NCDs.
• Put multiple, sustainable financing mechanisms for NCDs in place: Develop sustainable and integrated financing mechanisms for NCDs within health systems that reflect each country’s needs and capacity.
• Integrate NCD care: Promote awareness, health promotion, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care by integrating NCDs management into existing infrastructure and programs.
• Encourage stronger multi-sectoral collaborations: Increase participatory approaches able to integrate the expertise of all stakeholders.