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Grassroots innovation to beat noncommunicable diseases [1]
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Date: 2022-08
In 2021, WHO launched the NCD Lab, an initiative leveraging community-driven grassroots innovations with the potential to be game changers in beating diseases such as cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and heart disease.
Noncommunicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and respiratory disease kill 42 million people annually. The urgency and complexity of this epidemic call for novel, bold, and equitable approaches.
Since its launch, nearly 100 innovative projects have been submitted to the NCD Lab.
Young artists raise their voices to prevent diabetes
One of the winners is The Bigger Picture campaign, encouraging young people to use language, metaphor, and imagery to improve public health literacy and creatively expose the drivers of type 2 diabetes in marginalized and low-income communities in the United States of America.
In dedicated writing workshops, artists aged 14-19 years from marginalized and low-income communities learn about the environmental and socioeconomic inequities contributing to the diabetes epidemic with the help of a public health expert.
Monica Mendoza is one of the young artists participating in the programme. In a poem that she wrote, she criticizes the advertising campaigns for sugary drinks targeting the Latino community, particularly the portrayal of sugary beverages as an essential part of a happy family gathering.
Monica Mendoza in her award-winning video from The Bigger Picture project.
The poem highlights cheap sugary sweetened beverages and other unhealthy products that she sees families buying, “for the kids to eat after school for the next two weeks. […] Mom and dad are too busy to limit the intake of junk food. Too busy trying to make a living to live healthily,” resumes Monica in her video clip.
Supported by an artist-in-residence, participants create spoken word poems and perform them in public settings and through online videos.
“We are desperately looking for home in our plates and cups. Dinner has become an expedition, where we lick our plates clean and swallow cups of nostalgia. Nostalgia-- that isn't even from our own country. Our tongues have been colonized with the belief that this cup of [sugary sweetened beverage] is home," she writes.
The video clips, produced by young artists of The Bigger Picture Project, have been viewed more than a million times, and testimonies from young poets supported four successful sugary beverage tax initiatives in California.
Read more about this NCD Lab winning project
Beating diabetes through grassroots innovation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia
In the South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, another NCD Lab winner works with women and girls facing social stigma and health-related discrimination due to diabetes. The project empowers young women and their families to advocate for change, seek the right care, and become champions for safe and effective diabetes care in their community.
“We are looking to break the vicious cycle (of diabetes and social discrimination) by improving access to information, screening, and diabetes care for women so they can get good diabetes prevention measures and live more dignified lives,” says project lead Dr Belma Malanda.
Read more about this NCD Lab winning project
In Indonesia, the PEDIA project aims to address the under-diagnosis and inadequate treatment of type 1 diabetes in children. An innovative set of novel health education materials connects paediatricians, young patients, caregivers, and communities for a more holistic and sustainable approach to diabetes care, including a graphic novel, diaries for children, parental guidance, and a digital platform for diabetes education.
“We are looking to scale up our universal, cross-cultural education materials across Indonesia so that children and adolescents with Type 1 diabetes living in remote areas, those without access to technology and minority groups can be reached,” explained project founder and medical doctor Dr Ghaisani Fadiana.
Read more about this NCD Lab winning project
Collaborating with WHO’s Innovation Hub for its latest cycle, the NCD Lab invited submissions from innovators tackling the global rise of obesity in support of the WHO Acceleration Plan to STOP Obesity. Submissions are currently under review and winners will be announced in late 2022.
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[1] Url:
https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/grassroots-innovation-to-beat-noncommunicable-diseases
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