CARPHA, HCC renew agreement on NCDs

The Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency {CARPHA) and the Healthy Caribbean Coali­tion (HCC) have re­newed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing to con­tin­ue joint work on the re­gion­al re­sponse to non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs).

The five-year agree­ment was reaf­firmed in Port of Spain on De­cem­ber 5, 2025. It builds on more than eight years of col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the two or­gan­i­sa­tions and marks the third con­sec­u­tive MOU be­tween them.

Un­der the agree­ment, CARPHA will pro­vide sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal in­put, while HCC will fo­cus on en­gage­ment with civ­il so­ci­ety and ad­vo­ca­cy across CARI­COM mem­ber states.

The part­ner­ship aims to sup­port pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment, strength­en en­gage­ment with civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, and link sur­veil­lance da­ta to pub­lic ac­tion.

HCC’s Pres­i­dent, Dr Ken­neth Con­nell, said the agree­ment af­firms the role of civ­il so­ci­ety in re­gion­al pub­lic health work. He said the MOU will guide co­op­er­a­tion be­tween CARPHA and civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions as the re­gion works to­ward the 2030 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals. He added that the agree­ment recog­nis­es civ­il so­ci­ety as a part­ner in ad­vanc­ing pub­lic health mea­sures.

CARPHA’s Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Dr Lisa In­dar, said the col­lab­o­ra­tion al­lows ev­i­dence pro­duced by CARPHA to in­form ac­tion at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el. She said joint work with HCC sup­ports pol­i­cy im­ple­men­ta­tion and pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion re­lat­ed to health choic­es.

The agree­ment out­lines ar­eas of co­op­er­a­tion in­clud­ing: the cre­ation and shar­ing of ev­i­dence-based in­for­ma­tion; ca­pac­i­ty de­vel­op­ment among civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions; and the strength­en­ing of re­gion­al and na­tion­al part­ner­ships. It al­so in­cludes ad­vo­ca­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty to sup­port gov­ern­ments in meet­ing com­mit­ments on non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases.

CARPHA and HCC said the part­ner­ship will sup­port mem­ber states in ad­dress­ing con­di­tions such as di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, can­cer and chron­ic res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­ease through co­or­di­nat­ed re­gion­al ac­tion.