The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)'s Department of Non-communicable Diseases and Mental Health, and the Department of Health Systems and Services, convened a two day economic workshop on August 24-25 in Washington, DC. The purposes of the workshop were to 1) review the available information about the Americas region on the economic aspects of NCDs and their risk factors, and 2) to plan for future collaborations.
Meeting attendees from across the Pan American and North American regions discussed the following topics:
- Economic burden of NCDs and associated risk factors, such as obesity, physical inactivity and unhealthy diets in the Americas.
- Advances in the economic analysis of interventions to address NCDs and associated risk factors in the Americas.
- Experiences in the Region and the feasibility of applying different models and tools for NCD economic analysis; and the implications for public policy interventions.
This meeting was also an opportunity to launch the PAHO-DCP3 joint publication: Economic Dimensions of Non-Communicable Disease in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will serve as a companion product to the DCP3 series.