Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, Director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center & Executive Director of Innovations in Healthcare will moderate a panel discussion today, How to take leadership on SDG 3, as part of the 74th United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City. This panel brings together a diverse set of stakeholders with an interest in developing innovative solutions to ensure healthy lives for all. The event is co-hosted by The Permanent Mission of Denmark to the UN, The Royal Consulate General of Denmark in New York, The UN Global Compact, and LEO Pharma.

Melissa Powell, Chief of Staff of the UN Global Compact, and Magnus Heunicke, Minister of Health of Denmark, will introduce the session. Panelists are: Ranieri Guerra, Assistant Director-General for the Universal Health Coverage HLM, WHO; Loyce Pace, President & CEO, Global Health Council; Yanis Ben Amor, Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at the Earth Institute at Columbia; Desta Lakew, Global Director of Parnerships, Amref Health Africa; Catherine Mazzacco, CEO, LEO Pharma; and Carsten Tophold, Partner McKinsey.

In September 2015, world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The subject of this panel discussion, Goal 3, is an unprecedented global commitment to ensuring healthy lives and the promotion of wellbeing for all at all ages. With this, political momentum for global action on NCDs has steadily increased, but the burden of NCDs is still poorly understood. Many NCDs lack visibility in global, national, and local policy frameworks. Consequently, the pace of implantation actions needed for the transformational change that the 2030 Agenda brought to the Goals is lagging. With 11 years left on delivery for the goals, we must  consider the impact of NCDs and disease areas, which are less understood. There is much potential to address NCDs via prevention, screening, early diagnosis, treatment, and patient care. An integrated approach to SDG 3 is not without its challenges. It requires robust data and analytical tools, dynamic policy processes, monitoring for performance impact, and continued innovation in the health sector in areas such as digital health. The purpose of this panel is to explore how we can accelerate delivery on goals. We are asking experts and officials how corporate actors, civil society and institutions can work together on integrated approaches to implementing the 2030 Agenda.

Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, Director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center & Executive Director of Innovations in Healthcare moderates UNGA panel on private and public leadership to ensure healthy lives for all.