The Vital Role of the World Health Organization: Advancing the Global Health Agenda “Part One”
The World Health Organization (WHO) plays a central and vital role in “advancing” the ambitious global health agenda for 2025–2028 and accelerating health-related Sustainable Development Goals through its unique roles and responsibilities in catalyzing, enabling, and supporting collective health action.
This role is operationalized through WHO’s core functions, including normative work, its leadership and coordination role in international health, and its convening power on health issues.
Further support for the global health agenda is provided through the expansion of innovations and successful pilot projects, WHO’s extensive regional and country presence—with offices in six regions and over 150 countries and territories—and its broad technical and scientific expertise through networks of experts, collaborating centers, research institutions, and specialized centers and offices such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
In GPW 13, WHO introduced three strategic shifts through which it sharpens the focus and impact of its core technical functions:
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Strengthening leadership in health,
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Prioritizing and focusing on normative work and global public goods for impact,
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Creating public health impact in every country through a differentiated approach based on national capacities and vulnerabilities.
These three strategic shifts constitute three of WHO’s four “Organizational Results,” which are the pathways through which WHO’s core technical work contributes to achieving the strategic objectives and major results of GPW 14 for 2025–2028.
As “Organizational Results,” these are guided by the Secretariat, but the commitment and collaboration of Member States and partners are required to achieve health leadership, convening, engagement, normative, technical, and country support functions, while enhancing performance at all levels with accountability and transparency.
Organizational Result 1: Effective health leadership by WHO through convening, agenda-setting, engagement, and communications advances GPW 14 results and the “Leave No One Behind” goal.
WHO’s responsibility in health leadership is exercised through its convening, agenda-setting, governance, partnership, and communication roles in health, directly contributing to all strategic objectives and GPW 14 results at national, regional, and global levels, especially through existing and new partnerships in priority areas, particularly for whole-of-system approaches within and beyond the health sector.
Under this Organizational Result, during 2025–2028, WHO will strengthen governmental institutions to set global health priorities more efficiently and effectively.
The organization will advance the health, health equity, and well-being agenda in key political, multilateral, and technical forums at all three levels, and participate in strategic policy and advocacy dialogues to keep health and well-being at the top of the political agenda and ensure no one is left behind.
It will also highlight the central role of health in achieving broader development goals as an integral part of the Sustainable Development Goals agenda.
WHO will expand its evidence-based, data-driven strategic communications to promote both individual behaviors and policy changes needed to address all health needs and the right to health, with a central focus on reaching the left-behind populations and combating misinformation.
The organization will also continue to facilitate consensus on international health frameworks and strategies.
WHO will mobilize collective action among Member States and partners, stimulating engagement and collaboration across the diverse health actors and sectors necessary to achieve GPW 14 results, including mobilizing sustainable resources for WHO’s work and activities at all levels.
Given the rapidly growing trends in regional health collaboration, WHO’s regional capacity will also be strengthened to capitalize on increasing opportunities for regional partnerships and the organization’s growing responsibility in these partnerships; enhance collaboration with regional health bodies; and better support health investments made by regional multilateral development banks.
