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Advocacy Institute

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The NCD Advocacy Institute is a flagship Capacity Development initiative designed to strengthen NCD civil society to ensure a more effective NCD response.

It offers tailored technical assistance and training opportunities for both nascent and experienced national NCD alliances aiming to strengthen their impact and contribution to noncommunicable disease prevention and control.

Launched in 2017, the Advocacy Institute is a flagship Capacity Development initiative to support coalition building and context-specific, impact-driven advocacy campaigns particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

The Advocacy Institute consists of a multi-year partnership with organisations and alliances, supporting and strengthening the growth of NCD civil society across selected geographies. Its Seed Programme supports the establishment of NCD civil society networks in countries/regions where these are non-existent or nascent. The Accelerator Programme works with established NCD alliances in countries/regions to strengthen advocacy efforts where there are windows of opportunity for specific NCD policy change.

Advocacy Institute’s first phase 2017-2019

The Advocacy Institute’s first phase consisted of a three-year cycle, 2017-2019. A total of nine NCD alliances were supported via the Seed Programme (Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Philippines, and Vietnam), of which six alliances were founded during the programme. The Accelerator Programme supported five established alliances (Brazil, Colombia, India, Mexico and South Africa).

The Advocacy Institute Seed and Accelerator Programmes 2017-2019 have proven to be effective in the formation of new NCD alliances, the strengthening of existing ones, the development of strategic advocacy campaigns and the achievement of relevant policy wins.

Relevant results of this first phase from participating alliances:

+90% indicating that the programmes have effectively encouraged civil society coalition building.

+90% reporting that the Advocacy Institute helped them achieve advocacy wins or strengthen advocacy efforts in their countries.

85% having a clear and strategic advocacy agenda.

85% indicated being able to increase their knowledge base and ability to promote relevant NCD prevention and control policies.

Four exemplary advocacy and community building campaigns during first phase:

  1. Mexico Salud-Hable Coalition’s #VotoSaludable (#HealthyVote) digital campaign positioning the lack of NCD and health-focus in the 2018 presidential election campaign.
  2. Healthy India Alliance’s regional strategy to convene, mobilise and meaningfully involve people living with NCDs and youth from the country’s different regions in the alliance’s strategic planning.
  3. NCD-Vietnam’s successfully advocacy for a national alcohol control law that was approved by the National Assembly in June 2019.
  4. Healthy Philippines Alliance’s advocacy efforts supporting a national UHC law that was approved in April 2019 supported by the President.

Read more about the impact of the Advocacy Institute first phase here.

Advocacy Institute’s second phase (starting 2020)

A second phase of the Advocacy Institute started in 2020 with a new Seed Programme and a thematic NCDs and UHC Accelerator Programme. This is supported via NCDA’s partnerships with Access Accelerated, the Leona M. and Harry B. Charitable Trust and Viatris.
 
In 2021, thanks to NCDA’s partnerships with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), the Advocacy Institute is being expanded to support a new set of national NCD alliances. These geographies and alliances were selected based on an extensive scoping exercise undertaken between December 2020 and February 2021, with desk research and interviews, assessing country landscape and need, civil society capacity, as well as opportunities for NCD advocacy. This exercise served to inform the expansion of the Seed and NCDs and UHC Accelerator programmes, and the launch of a new thematic NCD Prevention Accelerator Programme.
 
By 2021, the Advocacy Institute’s second phase supports:
  • Coalition building of six alliances through a new Seed Programme (Cote de Ivoire, Bangladesh, Malawi, Nepal, Senegal and the Africa NCDs Network)
  • Increasing the capacity of eleven established NCD alliances to drive effective in-country NCD and UHC through the new NCDs and UHC Accelerator Programme (Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Malaysia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Vietnam)
  • Increasing the capacity of four established NCD alliance to drive advocacy on specific risk-factors through a new NCD Prevention Accelerator Programme (Ghana, India, Mexico and the Philippines)

Find out more about the Accelerator Programme.

Find out more about the Seed Programme.