The Sixth Meeting of the United Nations Interagency Task Force on the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases was hosted by UNDP between 10-12 February 2016 and held at the UN Headquarters in New York. The meeting was co-chaired by WHO and UNDP and attended by 20 UN agencies, programmes and funds.
The Task Force reflected on the experience of the UN system in supporting the development and implementation of national NCD responses in those countries that received a joint programming mission of the Task Force during the past two years.
The UN Country Team for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean was represented at the meeting and provided a detailed account of the support which the UN Country Team had provided to accelerate the implementation of multisectoral activities, following a joint programming mission to Barbados in 2015. Taking into account the lessons learned, the Task Force agreed on future joint programming missions.
Updates were provided on a number of current and emerging global joint programmes that are being developed by members of the Task Force to provide technical support to countries in specific areas. These include to scale up the Be He@lthy, Be Mobile mHealth initiative, which is currently supporting eight countries in the use of mobile phones to address NCDs, as well as to complete the work on global joint programmes under development to support countries in catalysing national multisectoral action for NCDs, strengthen national cancer programming, and accelerate national action to address cervical cancer.
A full day was dedicated to enhance the provision of coordinated technical assistance across the UN system on tobacco control. In addition, the Task Force received reports from the recently established Global Thematic Working Group on Harmful Use of Alcohol. The meeting also agreed to establish two new thematic global working groups, one on surveillance and one on road safety.
Ahead of the Sixth Meeting, International Development Law Organisation, UNDP and WHO convened a multistakeholder workshop on NCDs and the law. The Task Force agreed that it would conduct a study on how the UN system could meet the demand for technical assistance in this area. To forge the exchange of information, the WHO Global Coordination Mechanism on NCDs will establish a Community of Practice to take stock of existing legislation and facilitate the exchange of lessons learned.
The meeting agreed the final report for the 2014-2015 work plan and agreed that the 2016-2017 work plan will have an overarching strategic focus on: (i) fast-track action in a set of programme countries through a series of joint programming missions to strengthen UN Country Teams in scaling up technical assistance on NCDs; (ii) development and roll-out a series of global joint programmes; (iii) communication to policy makers in developing and developed countries about the work of the UN Task Force. The 2016-2017 work plan will also be made available on the Task Force website.
In keeping with the Task Force’s Terms of Reference, Members discussed conflicts of interest issues that had been shared with the Secretariat ahead of the Sixth Meeting.