Meeting

As the burden of chronic diseases continues to rise, low and middle income countries—whose health budgets are already stretched thin by other health and development priorities—are faced with difficult choices on how to best invest limited resources in control efforts for chronic diseases. Building on the key messages from the 2010 report, Promoting Cardiovascular Health in the Developing World: A Critical Challenge to Achieve Global Health, the IOM will hold a workshop on July 19-21, 2011 that will focus on country-level decision making for cardiovascular disease and related chronic diseases.

Using several low and middle income countries as case studies, this three-day workshop will examine country-level processes for making informed choices about chronic disease control programs. The aim of the workshop is to identify the infrastructure and data requirements for the development of a set of tools to support country-led planning for the effective, efficient, and equitable provision of chronic disease control programs. The goal of the toolkit would be to help decision makers assess their country’s needs, set priorities, and assess different scenarios for control efforts using the best available country-level data on the burden of disease and risk factors, the options for interventions, the resources that would be required, and the potential for return on investment through improved health outcomes and cost savings.