In a world of change, organizations must be prepared to respond and evolve. For Access Accelerated, this means reshaping our longstanding commitment to taking on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to address the most pressing needs facing the global NCD community.
Access Accelerated is no stranger to navigating a shifting global health landscape. Our ability to adapt to the complex and varying needs of global health stakeholders around the world has been steadily honed over our seven-year history. As we look forward to the second World Health Organization (WHO) global dialogue on financing national NCD responses and the fourth UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs in 2025, this evolutionary process continues.
Our experience has demonstrated the need for multisectoral collaboration and proven the value of an engaged private sector. These are key pillars of our work and they form the foundation of our strategic planning for 2024 and beyond. We will also continue to leverage our experience as a collective of industry leaders to strengthen the private sector’s role in addressing NCDs and respond decisively to growing calls by world leaders and experts for multisectoral NCD collaborations. Our ongoing strategic partnership with the World Bank Group—a collaboration that has supported many countries by catalyzing critical financing and facilitating the exchange of knowledge— will grow even deeper and stronger in 2024 and the years to come.
This is an exciting time. As Access Accelerated continues its evolution, we embrace the opportunity to build on what we have learned over the last seven years and to take strides toward fulfilling the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on reducing premature NCD deaths and achieving universal health coverage (UHC). Backed by the strong support of our member companies, collaborators around the world, and the World Bank, we are more determined than ever to make a meaningful difference for people living with NCDs.
Our successes, the connections we’ve formed, and the inroads we’ve made since 2017 have resulted in a bedrock of data and knowledge on which we are now building for the future, ensuring that we keep what’s effective while finding new ways to help more people, reach further, and be more focused and effective than ever before.
Looking ahead, we are convinced that identifying and implementing innovative ways to drive financing for NCDs is essential for achieving global health goals, and this will be our focus. However, our fundamental approach to addressing NCDs will not change, and neither will our unwavering commitment to the needs of the people who matter most: people living with NCDs and those who care for them. These are the voices who will continue to be central to our work.
What’s next for Access Accelerated? You will see us intensify our efforts to better respond to the needs of governments and other stakeholders so that, working together, we can more effectively harness the data and resources necessary to build robust health systems through sustainable and scalable national NCD financing mechanisms, policies, and programs.
The Access Accelerated Executive Committee:
Michael Fredrich, Chair
Sara Martin,Vice-Chair
Takanori Sato, Vice-Chair