Oxford Health Alliance

The Oxford Health Alliance (OxHA) serves to prevent and reduce the global impact of chronic disease. It stands for innovative action with diverse stakeholders around three risk factors (tobacco use, physical inactivity and poor diet) that lead to four chronic diseases (CVD, diabetes, chronic lung diseases and some cancers) contributing to more than 50% of deaths worldwide.

Formed under a partnership between Oxford University and Novo Nordisk A/S, OxHA is now an independently incorporated charity under UK law and operates from a London based secretariat. OxHA differs from traditional health NGOs in that it is issue-specific rather than disease-specific and plays a facilitating or catalyst role rather than a hands-on role. OxHA is self described as ‘confronting the epidemic of chronic diseases’. Its modus operandi for doing so takes a macro-economic and macro-political approach to influencing and accelerating the wave of change that is emerging to work towards making our physical, social and work environments more conducive to health.

OxHA Initiatives

• OxHA has launched 3FOUR50.com to foster the online sharing of ideas, experiences, videos, projects and research into health and healthy lifestyles.
• The Oxford Health Alliance currently has six workstreams workstreams: Economics; Workplace; Youth; Environment Design; Industry; and Law + Health.

The OxHA Asia Pacific Regional Centre was launched at the University of Sydney in late 2005 under the joint leadership and remit of Professor Stephen Leeder and Associate Professor Ruth Colagiuri. AHPI serves as an Australasian hub and focal point for OxHA and will foster and undertake activities to promote action to assist success in the 'race against time' to combat chronic diseases globally.

Since the launch, OxHA Asia-Pacific has steadily built a network of over 100 people and organisations, from Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, the Philippines, China and various Pacific Island countries, in a coalition of people committed to stemming the tide of chronic diseases. The list represents a range of public and private sectors and includes people from ministries of health, food and pharmaceutical companies, research and academia, clinical services, employee unions, NGOs (diabetes, heart, kidney and cancer), WHO-Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, private health related organisations and government organisations.

The Regional Centre will be instrumental in organising the next OxHA Summit, to be held in Sydney in February 2008. The meeting will deliver a global call to action – The Sydney Challenge – to inspire corporations, governments, financial institutions, donor agencies and others to build a healthy future.