NCDs x Health
What do non-communicable diseases have to do with anything?
[Quiero leer la versión en Español]
When people ask me what I do, I usually get the same reaction, “Wow! (pause) What does that mean?”
It started in 2020, right after the Covid-19 pandemic was declared by the WHO. I was a Global Health graduate student at the time so it seemed relevant for my family and friends to ask me what was going on. What nobody expected, though, was that my specialty was actually in non-communicable diseases (NCDs), defined below.
I have a pretty solid understanding of infectious disease, contact tracing, and epidemiology, not to mention over a decade of experience reading scientific articles and medical information, so I could help my family disentangle the overwhelming amount of (mis)information flowing into our daily lives. By the end of the pandemic, however, it seemed as though most people had either become accustomed to the jargon, learned a thing or two themselves about viruses and pandemics, or chose to completely ignore it. Yet, I continued to get the same responses regarding NCDs — “What does that mean?”
What are non-communicable diseases (NCDs)?
As opposed to infectious diseases, NCDs are all diseases that are not transmissible or infectious and are generally chronic, meaning that they may last for a long time or a lifetime. The four most common types of NCDs are cancers, diabetes, cardiovascular (heart) diseases and respiratory diseases. Other types of NCDs include mental and neuro conditions, injuries, muskoskeletal disorders, and even long Covid.
The four most common types of NCDs are cancers, diabetes, cardiovascular (heart) diseases and respiratory diseases.
We are all familiar with NCDs because they are so common. NCDs affect our neighbors, family, friends, and ourselves so our lives are filled with their stories.
My uncle died of cancer, my grandmother of a heart attack, and most of my family takes medication to control hypertension (i.e., high blood pressure). I bet yours too. In fact, according to Resolve to Save Lives, “the number of people living with high blood pressure doubled in the past 30 years — to about 1.3 billion.” That is roughly 16% of the world population living with one of the top risk factors for heart attacks and strokes.
What surprises me is just how little people know about these conditions, despite them being so personally relevant to all of us. It surprises me because I know how much NCDs affect every single one of our lives in ways that you may not even realize.
NCDs are the most pressing public health concern today
NCDs are perhaps the most pressing public health concern of this century. I don’t say this lightly. In 2019, the most recent year for which there is reliable global data available, NCDs accounted for 74.37% of deaths in the world.
Let that sit it.
NCDs account for the biggest portion of the health burden in both high and low and middle-income countries. In other words, they are the cause of most deaths, premature deaths (i.e., people dying before the average age of death), disease diagnoses, and healthy years of life lost due to illness/disability. And still, they are not as systematically addressed.
NCD prevention and control efforts lack billions of dollars in funding globally, with only 1–2% of health development finances allocated for NCDs.
All systems — regions, countries, as well as companies and organizations, will need to face the challenge NCDs pose head-on, especially those working in the healthcare space. International health organizations recognize this and it’s reflected in the Sustainable Development Goal 3.4.
NCDs have the biggest impact on our healthcare systems and on the economy. Over 70% of all deaths in the world are due to NCDs.
Together, NCDs have the biggest impact on our healthcare systems and on the economy. The prevalence of NCDs has huge financial implications at every economic level you can possibly think of (e.g., household to national to global). The impact is higher given their chronic nature.
Agents of change: What can we do?
Addressing NCDs is hard. They do not have a single identifiable cause. Rather, we can think about factors that drive them and increase the risk of developing them. Aging is one of them. So are social structures, commercial drivers, policies, genes, the environment, and lifestyle. I could keep going, but you get the idea. Thus, to successfully address NCDs we need multisectoral efforts.
So, I’ve decided to begin writing on NCDs. I’ll write about a bunch of things that go on in my head related to them — the things that you probably knew were a risk factor for your health but perhaps never realized just how much — as well as the things that we already know we can do to protect or improve our health and address disparities.
I hope that you will learn something about what the NCD umbrella encompasses and that, doing so, it will spark curiosity about what you can do.
For these problems, we need a diverse set of creative, innovative, and committed people making everyday decisions to tackle and address NCDs while improving health equity rather than going backward — we, public health/global health people cannot do it alone, shouting into the void.
We need a diverse set of creative, innovative, and committed people making everyday decisions to tackle and address NCDs while improving health equity.
Some days it feels like everything is related to our health. I hear it all the time, but with a negative connotation: “Nowadays, everything will kill you. Who cares, we all have to die someday!”
You are all right. Everything is connected to our health and we all have to die someday. But, I’m not so pessimistic that I’d give up just because its hard. Perhaps we’ll take advice from Syrio Florel and Arya Stark and say: “Not today.”
The good news is that when everything is connected, you can change the world.
About the author
Sara Gómez Trillos is a writer and consultant working at the intersection of behavioral health, non-communicable disease prevention and control, health innovation, and equity. Her writing reveals a deep fascination for philosophy, art, science, and interconnections in health.
Originally from Medellín, Colombia, she writes in both English and Spanish.
Follow Sara’s work on Medium and other platforms.
