PHSSR Policy Roadmaps for Acting Early on NCDs Synthesis Report 2025

35 Acting early on NCDs The Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilienceenvironmental hazards in deprived areas, indicates that health systems often reinforce rather than mitigate existing disadvantages. These findings have direct implications for how health systems should be organised. The subsequent chapters will examine: • How care delivery models can better integrate services across the prevention-detection-treatment continuum, addressing the fragmentation that leaves conditions undiagnosed and poorly controlled • How governance and accountability mechanisms can sustain long-term prevention efforts despite the temporal gap between intervention and outcome • How financing systems currently oriented toward acute care can be restructured to incentivise early intervention and prevention • How workforce capacity can be developed and deployed to reach populations with concentrated risk factors, particularly disadvantaged communities where NCDs cluster • How medicines and technologies can be optimally utilised, moving beyond simple availability to systematic implementation • How health systems can engage with environmental and commercial determinants that drive growth of NCDs The ongoing gap between life expectancy and healthy life years across all countries indicates that while health systems have succeeded in preventing death, they have been less successful in preventing disability and maintaining quality of life. This reflects health systems that intervene too late in disease processes. Only by modifying risks decades before they manifest can health systems avoid being overwhelmed by demographic inevitability. The variation between countries in both outcomes and risk factor prevalence demonstrates that different approaches yield different results, offering opportunities for cross-country learning and systematic improvement.