Areas of work

The work of the WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCD Office) is structured around 4 main areas:

• policy;
• monitoring and surveillance;
• prevention; and
• management.

These areas map neatly onto the 4 time-bound commitments for the prevention and control of NCDs of the 2014 United Nations General Assembly outcome document on NCDs (A/RES/68/271): adopting a national plan, setting national targets, reducing risks and strengthening health services for NCDs.

The NCD Office leads activities in the areas of prevention and surveillance, while the technical programmes of the Division of Noncommunicable Diseases and Promoting Health through the Life-course at WHO/Europe lead activities in the areas of policy and management. Together, these teams coordinate the WHO European Region’s delivery of global and regional mandates on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the WHO Global Monitoring Framework on NCDs and Health 2020 targets.

An important part of the NCD Office’s work is education and training. This includes building national capacity, enhancing leadership, promoting intersectoral action, and enabling countries to adopt good practices and use international materials in Russian.

Countries face a challenging task in tackling NCDs. This involves working across sectors to address the risk factors associated with these diseases – cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, obesity, chronic respiratory diseases and stroke – and improving health system responses to people who develop them. It requires implementing policies that enable and support healthy behaviours to prevent NCDs, and building information systems to provide baseline data and inform progress.