On the 24th and 25th of November, NCDFREE co-hosted their latest advocacy & innovation Bootcamp with the Global Health Centre at The Graduate Institute, Geneva. The Bootcamp was a one and a half day workshop which provided attendees from a range of health and non-health background with the skills, knowledge, confidence, and connections to become agents of change within the field of NCDs.
Both established and emerging leaders in global health from 40 nationalities. provided the leaders of tomorrow with sessions and skills in framing ideas, connecting to a team, refining their approach, and enacting change. This is important not only to increase multidisciplinary collaboration to tackle this global health challenge, but also to mobilise the leaders of tomorrow in the lead up to the third high level meeting at the United Nations General Assembly in 2018.
The programme focussed on the adoption of the Commercial Determinants of Health and the Health in All Policies approaches to tackle the NCD epidemic. Participants heard from and interacted with high-level speakers from Geneva-based organisations, including the World Health Organization, World Economic Forum, the NCD Alliance and the World Obesity Federation, and worked in smaller groups to tackle advocacy challenges. The complimentary workshops and presentations facilitated integrated learning and allowed immediate testing of the skills and ideas presented by the speakers.
Attendees left not only feeling inspired to engage and tackle the topic of non-communicable disease on a global level, but were connected to a new group of local change makers, who now have skills to make a global social change.
NCDFREE is a global social start up that makes the health burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) relevant, accessible and prominent in the minds of millennials worldwide. They advocate that NCDs are everyone’s business, including those from a ‘non-health’ background. Through creative communication techniques, they raise awareness around NCDs and emphasise the link between inequity and ill health. They work on a global level to deliver advocacy and innovation workshops such as the Bootcamps, alongside seminars, short global health films, multi-agency partnerships, and holding an extensive social media reach.
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Written for the GHC Newsletter by Jack Fisher, Global Coordinator, NCDFREE