Continuing our efforts to ensure safer, longer, and healthier lives.

This morning, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ founder Mike Bloomberg was reappointed for a third time as the World Health Organization’s Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) and Injuries at a breakfast where world leaders advanced their commitment to the NCD Global Compact and the goal to save 50 million lives by 2030.

We know that despite encouraging signs in the fight against NCDs and injuries, we remain far from achieving our mission.

A recent Gallup poll found that a majority of people are unfamiliar with the term ‘NCD,’ and that there is significant room for improvement when it comes to people’s comprehension of the links between NCDs and their corresponding risk factors.

Nonetheless, Mike’s renomination is a testament to the strides that have been made.

In the six years that Mike has been in the role, Bloomberg Philanthropies and our partners have made significant progress towards our shared end goal.

Last year, our Initiative for Global Road Safety awarded 35 grants across 13 countries to support advocacy for stronger policies aimed at reducing road deaths. This led to notable policy changes in Ecuador as well as multiple Chinese cities. Road traffic crashes continue to be one of the major causes of death globally, as they kill nearly 1.3 million people every year.

Additionally, Partnership for Healthy Cities (PHC) – a global network of cities committed to saving lives by preventing NCDs and injuries, established during Mike’s first term as global ambassador for NCDs – has grown to 70 member cities, including last year’s expansion to Bucharest, Cairo, Córdoba, Dublin, Greater Manchester and Warsaw.

The recent expansion also saw an additional investment of $31 million to the far-reaching initiative aimed at empowering mayors to implement proven, data-driven policies and programs that will reduce the number of deaths from NCDs and injuries.

For example, Greater Manchester is focusing funding received from Bloomberg Philanthropies to design more smoke-free spaces with the hope of catalyzing a shift in cultural and societal attitudes towards the tobacco use.

However, PHC is just one area of our work.

In July, we made a $115 million commitment to Resolve to Save Lives, a global nonprofit focused on reducing lives lost from heart diseases, a top cause of death globally. Resolve to Save Lives has a similar goal of saving 100 million lives from cardiovascular disease by 2047.

The decision to bolster our commitments was driven by two realities.

First, the COVID-19 pandemic set much of the world back, as access to resources and care were stifled for the better part of two years.

Second, funding for combating NCDs – especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where we do a large amount of our work – continues to be woefully insufficient as the prevalence of NCDs continues to rise, as outlined in WHO’s latest report on NCDs.

So, progress has been made, but our work is far from complete.

Our endeavor for a healthier world continues, and I hope you’ll support us in this fight to save lives.