We have already discussed the WHO's approval of an NCD Platform designed to encourage private-sector engagement in NCD solutions. The Platform, to be housed within WHO, will bring together representatives from WHO, member states, leading academic institutions, and the private-sector into a "seamless web," building capacity for cross-sector engagement and emphasizing preparation, engagement, and value creation. By using its resources to build capacity, the Platform can help to turn WHO's goals into actionable objectives. In this sense, the Platform will act as both an essential convening mechanism and a source of knowledge about and solutions to the NCD challenge.
WHO's recommendation of a Platform in Recommendation Six of the Commission's Final Report represents a major step forward, indicating just how much the conversation surrounding NCDs has evolved in the two years since the Commission began its work. In early 2018, the Commission was focused primarily on the health impacts of NCDs. The NCD Platform signals an increased focus on the economic impacts of NCDs and outlines an institutional construct to address them.
The Platform is a flexible structure which will allow participants to construct solutions within a productive, supportive environment. Using evidence-based case studies and well-developed frameworks, the Platform will build trust among stakeholders (including within WHO), facilitate exchanges of information, provide a repository of essential frameworks, skills, and evidence-based case studies, and enable sustainable engagement of the private sector in NCD solutions. The Platform is supportive of "public-private partnerships, or, as [the] Commission seeks to frame them, partnerships for the common good."65 The Platform could provide guidance on the management of conflicts of interest and the navigation of legal, regulatory, and contractual matters.
Governments and corporations looking to maximize the potential for knowledge transfer should look to the WHO NCD Platform-and similar multilateral institutions-for support. Indeed, partners looking to succeed in using PPPs to combat NCDs are not alone. As international support mounts for this kind of action, the WHO Platform has the potential to become a powerful resource, not just as a reservoir of knowledge, but a continuous feedback mechanism, encouraging consistent knowledge transfers between WHO and member states.
While the NCD Platform is still under development, progress, which began in late 2019, has been stymied by the Covid-19 pandemic. There is, however, no reason to suspect that this vital institution has been abandoned. And given the significant comorbidities between NCDs and Covid-19, any strategy to address the novel coronavirus will also have to address NCDs.
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65"It's Time to Walk the Talk: WHO High-Level Commission on NCDs final report," World Health Organization, 2019.