What we do
WDF’s work is divided into two intervention areas - Care and Primary Prevention - supported by Advocacy
WDF's intervention areas - Primary Prevention, Advocacy and Care.


WDF’s 2021-25 strategy outlines the following goals for each area:

CARE: Strengthen national health systems to sustainably improve diabetes care and prevent diabetes complications via integrated care

PRIMARY PREVENTION: Address the determinants of health and diabetes risk factors

ADVOCACY: Raise the priority of NCD prevention and control within global, regional and national agendas

WDF’s work is governed by these Guiding Principles:

Integrated care
In the context of NCDs, integrated health services are implemented in a way that ensures people living with NCDs receive a full continuum of health care. This includes health promotion, disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, disease management, rehabilitation and palliative care services, coordinated across the different levels and sites of care within and beyond the health sector, and according to people’s needs and throughout the life-course. Models for integration should fit local contexts.
(WHO definition adopted during the 69th WHA, May 2016)

Life-course approach
The life-course approach focuses on a healthy start to life and targets the needs of people at critical periods throughout their lifetime. It promotes timely investments with a high rate of return for public health and the economy by addressing the causes, not the consequences, of ill health.
(WHO Europe, 2021)

Universal health coverage
All people should have access, without discrimination, to nationally determined sets of the needed health services (including prevention, promotion, treatment, rehabilitation and palliation) and affordable and effective medicines while also ensuring that the use of these services does not expose the user to financial hardship, particularly for those who are vulnerable or in vulnerable situations. 
(from the Universal Declaration on the UHC, September 2019)