The Vital Role of the World Health Organization: Advancing the Global Health Agenda “Part Three”

The Organization’s increasing engagement with the private sector — including research and development, innovation, the delivery of health services, data and digital health, and innovative financing — will continue to be aligned with the Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors (FENSA).

Effective follow-up, communications, and advocacy to promote informed decision-making and healthy behaviors are among the most important tools through which the World Health Organization exercises its leadership role in health at all levels.
WHO’s strategic health communications will support governments, organizations, communities, and individuals to advance and protect health and well-being — taking into account the needs and realities of diverse groups — through interventions that are data-driven, evidence-based, responsive to social listening insights and social and behavioral sciences, and regularly monitored and evaluated for impact.

WHO will continue to promote and advocate for health at the highest political levels at country, regional, and global levels, drawing attention to the need for action on critical health issues, particularly those that are neglected or that exacerbate health inequities.

WHO will use communications to mobilize regional political fora and institutions to prioritize health; at the country level, communications will be used to raise awareness of key health issues in local contexts, support policy change, and facilitate the implementation of strong, rights-based, and equity-oriented programmes.

At all levels, WHO will promote informed decision-making and healthy behaviors, counter misinformation and disinformation — including by supporting effective governance of social media, collaborating with the United Nations and other partners to promote information integrity and build societal resilience to misinformation and disinformation — and support political diplomacy for health within the framework of international commitments.

WHO will also support countries in improving and strengthening national capacities for health communications.

Organizational Outcome 2

The timely delivery, broad accessibility, and use of high-quality WHO normative, technical, and data products enable health impact at the country level.

WHO’s core normative and technical work plays a central and unique role in the health ecosystem, supporting and enabling the work of Member States and partners at all levels by providing global reference standards and nomenclatures, internationally accepted policy options and guidance, global research priorities and agendas, prequalified products, trusted assessment tools, indicators and benchmarks, as well as standardized health indicators, data, and analyses.

For the period 2025–2028, these WHO “global public health goods” will be guided and prioritized in support of the strategic goals and outcomes of GPW 14. WHO will deploy and scale its cross-cutting capacities in science, evidence, research (including hosted partnerships), digital health, data and information systems, gender equality, human rights and health equity, and innovation for this purpose.

This organizational outcome also encompasses norm- and standard-setting processes, expert advisory group procedures, regulatory and product prequalification work, health status monitoring and reporting, and quality assurance practices to support the effective development, adoption, and delivery of global public health goods.

This outcome will also implement recent recommendations to further align normative products with Member State priorities, strengthen feedback loops, improve monitoring and evaluation, and ensure the systematic integration of gender equality and equity considerations.

The main areas of work under Organizational Outcome 2 for the four-year period 2025–2028 are as follows:

Advancing the development of evidence-based normative guidance and quality assurance
During 2025–2028, WHO will place particular emphasis on developing and ensuring the timely availability of evidence-based norms and standards, policy options, and products that are designed around countries’ urgent needs and quality-assured to generate impact and advance the strategic goals and outcomes of GPW 14.

WHO will continue to produce and maintain evidence-based public health guidelines and other normative products, using rigorous, up-to-date, quality-assured, and living methodologies, including in the field of social and behavioral sciences.