Introduction

The purpose of the World Health Organization's Global Forum on Chronic Disease Prevention and Control is:

• to prevent the incidence of chronic diseases¹ by tackling the major risk factors and underlying determinants of health;
• to reduce premature mortality and morbidity caused by leading causes of death;
• to improve quality of life, with particular focus on developing countries, working through regional networks in line with the WHO Global Strategy for Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Control approved by the 53rd World Health Assembly in 2000 and the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity, and Health endorsed by member states at the 57th World Health Assembly in 2004.

The initial meeting of the Global Forum (November, 2001 in Geneva, Switzerland) defined the goal and objectives, functions, key areas and methods of the Global Forum for chronic disease prevention and control and developed a broad framework for conclusions and recommendations. The second and third meetings of the Global Forum took place in China and Brazil and provided an opportunity to consolidate and advance the Forum's objectives.²

Global Forum IV

The fourth meeting of the Global Forum took place in Ottawa, Canada from Wednesday, November 3 to Saturday, November 6, 2004.3 This transitional meeting carried on the work of the previous meetings in implementing the Global Forum's purpose and objectives in a format designed to encourage active participation and discussion among participants. The focus of Global Forum IV was on regions, countries and networks acting together in the best interest of national, integrated chronic disease prevention and control. Objectives were:

1. To provide a global update on the current situation in integrated, chronic disease prevention and control
2. To promote and enable the development of international partnerships and inter-region collaboration for national, integrated chronic disease prevention and control
3. To encourage and develop national strategic action planning in member countries, including priorities and key action areas
4. To facilitate network building, knowledge translation and information sharing among regional networks, countries, collaborating centres and other stakeholders
5. To build on existing efforts to develop a coordinated platform for supportive policy development and implementation among member countries

Forum Themes

The Forum was structured around action in the following three theme areas:

Policy, e.g., to enable action through evidencebased advocacy;

Participation, e.g., to facilitate and enable implementation within member countries, networks, non-governmental oranizations (NGOs) and other stakeholders across the full spectrum prevention through collaboration and partnership; and

Planning, e.g., to support action through identification of priorities, opportunities and barriers, and actions to address them.

Participants at Global Forum IV included representation from WHO regional offices, WHO Regional Networks for Chronic Disease, Member States, WHO Collaborating Centres, development agencies and donors, and international NGOs.

Outputs and Resources

Detailed Forum outputs (including records of discussions, tools, references, presentation summaries) can be found in the Annexes to this document

1. For the purposes of this report, the terms "chronic disease" and "noncommunicable disease" are considered synonymous.
2. Reports from previous Forums can be found at the following web sites:
   World Health Organization. Proceedings of the Global Forum on Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Control. November, 2001.
   World Health Organization. The Report of the Second meeting of the Global Forum on Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Control. November, 2002.
   World Health Organization. III Global Forum on Non-communicable Diseases Prevention and Control: Activities Report. November, 2003.
3. The Global Forum IV agenda is included in Part 5.1 of the Global Forum Annex on Outputs and Resources.

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