Uniting to Combat Action Framework

Inspired by the World Health Organization's 2020 Roadmap on NTDs, there has been tremendous progress in the control or elimination of these devastating diseases since 2012. From 2013 to 2017, the Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases (“Uniting”) partnership has produced an annual scorecard and report to celebrate progress and highlight the principal challenges.

The Uniting partnership reviewed the scorecard approach in 2017. The initial scoring process was associated with several challenges in terms of inconsistent indicators across diseases and the number of subjective judgements required to arrive at a final score. The scorecard review resulted in a transition from a scoring approach to a collaborative assessment of progress, gaps and priorities, and identification of areas for collective action.

Two new tools replaced the scorecard: the Action Framework and the Impact Dashboard.

• The Action Framework is a standardized gap analysis tool. It uses qualitative input from stakeholders across the NTD community and fosters dialogue and collective action among a broad set of stakeholders.
• The Impact Dashboards display quantitative data sourced from WHO and pharmaceutical companies, with standardized indicators across the PC and IDM diseases, to provide a high-level view of impact and gaps at the global level.

The purpose of these two new tools is to strengthen partnership, coordination and collaboration between the public and private sectors, in order to accelerate global NTD efforts enabling the more than a billion people suffering from NTDs to lead healthier and more self-sufficient lives.

The scope of the project is specific to the London Declaration and includes the ten London Declaration diseases, regardless of countries, regions, available partners or funding. This report focuses on the Action Framework.

The Action Framework process was developed jointly by Uniting to Combat NTDs Support Center and the NNN London Declaration Scorecard Working Group (NNN LDS WG) as a tool for gap analysis and action-oriented dialogue both within and across the ten NTDs of the London Declaration. The analytical framework has three pillars: enabling environment, strategy, and public health intervention. These divide into 11 components and 33 requirements. This structure facilitated a cross-disease analysis to identify programmatic areas that represent opportunities for progress through collective action and shared learning.

Download the Action Framework report 2018 from the PDF link on the right.