Dr Nick Banatvala is the head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases. The Task Force was established by the United Nations Secretary-General in 2013 and report to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The Secretariat is based in WHO’s Headquarters in Geneva.
The role of the Task Force is to bring the UN system together to tackle non-communicable diseases (NCDs), mental health and other NCD-related Sustainable Development Goals. The Task Force uses its networks and expertise to help governments develop and introduce effective responses to prevent and control NCDs. It provides high quality technical support to enable governments across the world to develop and implement multisectoral action that is aligned with broader national development plans.
Prior to this, Nick was Head of Global Affairs at the Department of Health in England where he led the development and implementation of the UK Government’s first-ever global health strategy. Before that, he headed up the UK Department for International Development’s work on global health partnership and scaling up health services. Prior to this, Nick led DFID’s health and education programming to Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East. Nick has experience of the non-governmental sector, having worked with the UK aid agency Merlin on a number of humanitarian and development programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Former Soviet Union.
Nick trained in paediatrics and infectious diseases before doing public health and epidemiologic research in the East End of London and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Nick has held senior posts in UK public health, where his portfolios included cardiovascular disease, diabetes, breast and cervical cancer screening, and clinical governance. Nick has sat on government, non-government and academic boards, as well as national and international committees. He has undertaken consultancies for a number of agencies including the World Bank.
Nick holds a honorary chair at Manchester University, a senior lectureship at Imperial College, London and is an honorary senior fellow at Cambridge.
In addition to being the lead author of a number of WHO and UK Government publications, Nick has published widely in a range of peer-reviewed journals. Nick is co-editor of Noncommunciable Diseases: A Compendium, published in 2023.
