Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) pose growing health, economic and social burdens, threatening sustainable development across the Western Pacific Region. As highlighted in the Regional Action Framework for NCD prevention and control in the Western Pacific 2022, strategic use of data is essential to NCD programmes—in identifying at-risk populations, setting priorities, guiding interventions, and evaluating policy impact. Further, WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific’s latest vision paper, Weaving Health for Families, Communities and Societies in the Western Pacific Region (2025−2029), underscore the urgency of accelerating NCD prevention efforts.
In June 2023, the Regional Office organized the Data for Policy: Workshop to Strengthen Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Control in collaboration with the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. The workshop identified critical challenges including data integration issues, limited human resources, and gaps between data collection and policy development. Countries emphasized the need for practical guidance on translating data into actionable policies.
Building on these lessons, this follow-up workshop focuses specifically on NCD prevention programmes. This workshop is centred around practical frameworks to strengthen data-to-action approaches and designed to allow more targeted examination of population-based surveys and alternative data sources, for deeper exploration of how data can guide strategies for NCD prevention.
The objectives of the workshop are:
(1) to examine existing data to assess alignment with NCD prevention priorities and current interventions and to identify data and policy gaps;
(2) to strengthen capacity to interpret and apply diverse data sources for policy and programme development; and
(3) to develop country-specific action plans to strengthen data generation and utilization for NCD prevention.
