Statement to the UN Multi-stakeholder hearing on NCDs

Statement to the UN Multistakeholder hearing on NCDs 

Thank you for this opportunity. On behalf of the World Obesity Federation and our member organisations in over 100 countries, I would like to make three brief points on the urgent need for multistakeholder action.

First, the NCD movement has seen real success – HEARTS, attention to mental health, fiscal policies. We have also seen failures, based on fragmented efforts resulting from a lack of resources and prioritisation. 

The best antidote to fragmentation is a coordinated, multisectoral response, encompassing both prevention and management across sectors. World Obesity calls for multistakeholder and multisectoral action to address the determinants of NCDs from all angles. Working within the NCD community and beyond, across health, food, education, built environment, we call for better governance, strengthened health systems and environments, and financing. We need not fear multistakeholder approaches, we need only to look at how they delivered incredible success and impact in HIV.      

Second, multisectoral action is critical to addressing NCDS.  An example of this is the WHO Acceleration Plan Stop Obesity, approved in 2022, which requires working across prevention and management and with different sectors around the table as the only way to have an impact on this disease and a driver of other diseases. Indeed, Obesity and overweight lie at the root of the global NCD system—affecting nearly one-eighth of humanity while remaining paradoxically overlooked in the NCD response. It serves as the foundation for multiple health conditions—of 10 million premature NCD deaths each year, 1.6 million attributable to obesity.  

Yet our approach remains fragmented, missing the strategic opportunity before us. It is everywhere and nowhere.  Investing in a multisectoral approach to obesity yields a double dividend, ipactin obiesty and CVD, diabtes, cancer other diseases assoicatied with it. we also need to acknowledge that stigma is impending progress, in the general public and in our own institutions and governments..  Our colleagues in Soth Africa note that this is reminiscent of 30 years ago and state that "Obesity is South Africa's new HIV"  Again, investing in obesity yields a double dividend across many NCDs.

insufficiently included at the highest levels of ideation, governance and strategy in the NCD movement. Who better to demonstrate the success of a multisectoral approach–or call out its limitations–than the individuals who directly navigate these systems and who are harmed when our policies are incondite and even harmful.  We must have greater unity as a movement.  As we face the need to confront and call out governments and industries to do more, do better, and promote health, we need strength in numbers. Collectively, we can stand up to the forces that attempt to undermine our efforts, and the strength and legitimacy of people with lived experience must be central to this.  People with lived experience are among the strongest individuals I know.  It is time to stop asking them– us, actually, because I also live with NCDs– to come to the table late in the game; we need to build the table together. We are the ones we have been waiting for. 

Let’s make 2025 and the upcoming High-level Meeting the moment when we turn our back on siloed working once and for all, to make health and NCDS including obesity everyone’s business.