PATH, Coalition for Access to NCD Medicines
Reflections by the Coalition for Access to NCD Medicines and Products on the Zero Draft of the Political Declaration
Briefs & Fact Sheets
28 May 2025
Panel 1: Tackling the determinants on noncommunicable diseases, mental health and well-being through multisectoral and effective governance and collaborative action
Children, adolescents, and youth must be at the core of a comprehensive response to Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and Mental Health conditions. Embedding their priorities across the NCD and mental health care continuum is essential for any substantial progress towards global, regional and national NCD targets and the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 3.4.
We urge Member States to adopt a life-course approach, including primary prevention of NCDs, recognise young people as key stakeholders and embrace meaningful involvement of young community leaders and lived experience champions, in NCD and mental health programming and policy action through the following actions:
1. Safeguard NCD policies from vested commercial interests of health harming industries, particularly towards aggressive marketing targeted at children, adolescents, and young people, particularly girls and young women, thereby amplifying primordial and primary prevention of NCDs.
2. Apply proven indigenous interventions such as yoga and traditional systems of medicine, to amplify prevention, care and management of NCD and mental health conditions.
3. Prioritise meaningful engagement of children and adolescents affected by NCDs to inform decision making processes, including those living with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus, Sickle Cell Anemia, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Asthma, and congenital and acquired heart diseases in children.
4. Accord urgent attention to integrated and intensified focus on mental health, as a critical component of NCD mitigation efforts.
5. Ensure prioritisation of vulnerable children, adolescents and young people impacted by migration, within mental health action and NCD prevention, care and management interventions.
6. Invest financial, technical and human resources towards institutionalising meaningful youth engagement through capacity building and scaling-up evidence-based youth-led interventions.
We call upon Member States to support the Kigali youth Declaration and the NCD Alliance Call to Lead, to ensure that the priorities of young people are embedded in the Political Declaration of the upcoming 4th UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs and mental health.
