Vijay Kumar Chattu, UNU-CRIS Associate Research Fellow, is Presenting Paper at the Global Health Conference in Norway

Vijay Kumar Chattu, UNU-CRIS Associate Research Fellow, is presenting paper on Port of Spain Declaration’ to Bridgetown Declaration’: Role of CARICOM’s Leadership and Regional Health Diplomacy in shaping global solutions" and is scheduled on 6 November.

Abstract:

The Caribbean community (CARICOM) has demonstrated a history of influencing global decision-making processes through its policies and implementation. Notably, CARICOM’s Port of Spain Summit Declaration (POSSD) has played a pivotal role in facilitating the adoption of the inaugural UN political declaration on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in 2018. Similarly, through the SAMOA (SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action) pathway agreements, the small island developing states (SIDS) have provided the roadmap for the Bridgetown declaration emphasizing social, environmental, economic, and commercial challenges contributing to NCDs and mental health conditions. These two regional policies addressing the NCDs, climate change and mental health are aligned with the global UN-SDGs and Universal Health Coverage targets to improve health and build sustainable health systems. With its high-level political commitment from the heads of the States, the region has provided a normative framework, allocated resources, strengthened partnerships and represented at various global platforms advocating for NCDs, climate change and human security. Regional Health Diplomacy (RHD) and leadership of the Caribbean have shown the world its serious commitment to the world’s pressing problems and provided a great example of political commitment through its success stories. This paper highlights the role of CARICOM's RHD and leadership in driving the POSSD and Bridgetown Declaration to the global-policy level. RHD played a critical role in policy formulation and high-level political commitment to address the growing burden of NCDs, Mental health and climate crisis in the CARICOM region

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