Toshiko_Keneda

Speaker Key

TKToshiko Keneda

Speaker / Transcript
TK / My name is Toshiko Keneda, and I am a senior research associate at the Population Reference Bureau. We have been fortunate to receive support from the Youth Health Programme for our project to examine NCD risk factors among young people across Africa, and they kindly invited me to give… present about our project.
So we are currently working on the policy brief and the data sheet that we think could be extremely helpful to governments across Africa. Our publications will provide the most recent data available on the key NCD risk factors among young people across Africa.
Currently there is no central location where you can find this data, and beyond a couple of international service that are very well known, country specific and some national surveys are often hard to find, and they are also not easy to access, even though they provide very valuable data.
And even when we do find data, they often define ways that make them very difficult to compare over time, or across populations. So identifying this data, and making them easily accessible, is extremely important in ensuring that this valuable data reach policy audiences. And this is where we hope to contribute with our publications.
Our publications will bring together all disparate data sources, including those that may not have otherwise reached policy audiences, and will present them in an easily accessible format. So let me give you some ideas of how our publications can be helpful to governments.
Our publications can help raise awareness among policy makers about the current NCD risk levels among their young people, and how they are rapidly increasing, and how this has serious consequences on future NCD burden, and ultimately, the country’s development.
Awareness about this critical link is an essential first step towards lowering NCD risks among young people, and preventing NCDs. Another way in which our publications can be helpful is that having NCD risk profiles among young people across countries will allow governments to compare their current risk levels with those of others in the region, and help them identify areas where they can improve their prevention and intervention efforts.
Our publications will also identify information gaps, so countries can zero in on where they can strengthen their surveillance on the risk levels. So these are just a couple of examples of ways in which our publications can be helpful to governments as they make some of the critical steps in NCD prevention.