On September 25, 2025, world leaders will gather in New York for the Fourth United Nations High-Level Meeting on Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health, which will culminate in the adoption of a Political Statement by Member States.
This meeting represents a crucial opportunity to strengthen the global response to NCDs and protect the health of millions of people. However, the text of the Political Statement has been weakened throughout the negotiations, jeopardizing ambitious commitments that are essential for advancing robust, rights-based public health policies.
COLANSA emphasizes:
- The importance of using commercial determinants of health (Lancet[1] and WHO[2]) to limit the strategies and practices of industries that produce unhealthy products (tobacco, alcohol, food, fossil fuels, and others) in creating unhealthy environments.
- The need to develop mechanisms for the prevention, mitigation, and management of conflicts of interest and interference by industries producing unhealthy products in the advancement and development of the best interventions to reduce NCDs by countries.
- The importance of recovering and strengthening strategies to reduce NCD risk factors (Best Buys, 2024 update[3]), especially:
- Implementing taxes on sugary drinks among fiscal policies as one of the most cost-effective strategies for achieving a healthy diet;
- Eliminating industrially produced trans-fatty acids (iTFA);
- Implement front-of-package nutritional warning labels as part of comprehensive policies to guarantee the right to information and enable consumers to make better purchasing choices;
- The importance of involving civil society in all aspects of raising awareness, providing services, promoting knowledge, and supporting the implementation and accountability of the response to NCDs.
The COLANSA community calls on countries to take bolder measures in their political commitments to address the challenges that NCDs pose in our region. We believe in the need for continuous improvement to achieve the highest standards in public health policies, based on up-to-date scientific evidence, free of conflicts of interest, that protect the human right to health for the entire population of the Americas.
[1]https://www.thelancet.com/pb-assets/Lancet/series/commercial-determinants-health/defining-conceptualising_spanish-1698064132923.pdf
[2]https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/commercial-determinants-of-health