Advocacy

Mobilizing technical, policy, and financing support for integrated service delivery models

The NCDI Poverty Network Advocacy, Communications, and Membership & Engagement teams work to raise awareness of the need to prioritize access to care for severe conditions that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest children and young adults, to amplify the voices of people living with these severe conditions, and to mobilize a global campaign of solidarity to address these conditions as both a moral imperative and a key to achieving universal health coverage.

Advocacy priorities for 2023-2025

  • to build a solidarity movement around PEN-Plus at global, national, and local levels;

  • To advocate for funding—from individuals, organizations, legislatures, and parliaments—for PEN-Plus internationally; and

  • To engage advocates on a grassroots level to ensure PEN-Plus care is relevant, effective, culturally appropriate, and socially and financially supported.

Advocacy Updates

Featured
International Conference Series on PEN-Plus in Africa to Debut in April
International Conference Series on PEN-Plus in Africa to Debut in April

“PEN-Plus” was coined only five years ago, but already the integrated care-delivery model is receiving a spotlight on the global stage, with the launch of the first annual International Conference on PEN-Plus in Africa. An invitational conference hosted by the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa, ICPPA 2024 will take place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from April 23 to 25.

Integration Science Can Help Heal Global Health Inequities
Integration Science Can Help Heal Global Health Inequities

Integration science can do more than deliver quality healthcare; it can also deliver global health equity solutions. That’s the central premise of “From Local Innovation to National Scale to Global Impact: Integration Science as an Engine of Change and an Agenda for Action,” the second annual symposium of the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity.

Stronger Together: The Power of Patient Organizers in the Fight for Global Health Justice
Stronger Together: The Power of Patient Organizers in the Fight for Global Health Justice

“People living with chronic conditions have historically not been considered important decision-makers from a policy perspective,” said Dr. Apoorva Gomber, coauthor of an opinion piece recently published in PLOS Global Public Health.

Network Celebrates Launch of Voices for PEN-Plus</a>
Network Celebrates Launch of Voices for PEN-Plus

“We know what is best for us,” said Anu Gomanju, a person living with rheumatic heart disease in Nepal. “That’s why our needs and voices need to be prioritized.”

Gomanju made that statement in late September, during the online launch event for Voices for PEN-Plus. Sponsored by the NCDI Poverty Network, Voices for PEN-Plus brings together people living with severe, chronic, noncommunicable conditions to advocate for PEN-Plus implementation in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Building Solidarity for Severe, Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases: Team PEN-Plus Runs in Support
Building Solidarity for Severe, Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases: Team PEN-Plus Runs in Support

“I run in support of the millions of people worldwide who live with type 1 diabetes,” said Dr. Apoorva Gomber, associate advocacy director of the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “I’ve run a marathon before and fundraised in the past. Still, this event was special because of the person who motivated my fundraising.”

Apoorva Gomber Delivers Impassioned Plea at UN Hearing
Apoorva Gomber Delivers Impassioned Plea at UN Hearing

“Where a child lives should not determine whether a child lives,” declared Dr. Apoorva Gomber, associate advocacy director for the NCDI Poverty Network. “And yet children with type 1 diabetes in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa often die within a year of diagnosis. This reality is morally unconscionable.”