The World Food Programme (WFP) assists 80 million people in around 80 countries each year, delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. On any given day, WFP has 5,000 trucks, 20 ships and 92 planes on the move, delivering food and other assistance to those most in need. It also makes this global capacity and expertise in humanitarian logistics available to United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations and governments. UNDP benefits from the logistical support of WFP in the context of health programme service delivery in challenging operating environments, including conflict-affected countries.

The partnership between UNDP and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is committed to achieving tangible and complementary results across the humanitarian-development continuum. This includes work in health to support governments and communities as they respond to urgent needs, to ensure resilient and sustainable systems for health are in place to contribute to universal health coverage. UNDP also procures pharmaceuticals for health programmes via established UNDP partnership agreements with the UNICEF Supply Division.

UNDP’s partnership with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) enables complementary interventions to ensure that HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria services reach mobile and displaced populations. Under a multi-country Global Fund grant, UNDP works in close collaboration with UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to provide TB prevention, care and treatment services for migrants, refugees and returnees in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. This includes leveraging the existing presence of UNHCR to ensure migrant and refugee communities are involved in programme decisions and outreach. In Djibouti, UNDP partners with UNHCR, the Global Fund and the Government to bring TB diagnosis and treatment facilities to refugee camps, increase awareness, reduce stigma and stop the spread of TB.

UNDP’s health team collaborates with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on issues related to environmental health, with the objective of reducing the impacts of air, soil and water pollution and chemical exposure on human health. Joint activities in this area include strengthening the readiness of low- and middle-income countries to address pollution and the related health impacts, such as by developing national health and pollution action plans, coordinated by the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution , and by developing governance tools to strengthen and streamline environmental health governance, policies and legislation. UNDP and UNEP also collaborate at the national level to develop health-promoting and environmentally sustainable road safety policies and policies on greening the COVID-19 vaccination as a part of UNDP’s support for vaccine equity. In addition to country-level initiatives, UNDP and UNEP, with other partners, provide guidance documents for decision makers and other actors on how to improve environmental health outcomes globally and also support the scaling of One Health approached for pandemic prevention and preparedness in collaboration with Nature4Health.

The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme makes significant contributions to UNDP’s health implementation support in a growing number of countries where UNDP serves as interim Principal Recipient of the Global Fund grants for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria programmes. Through assignments to UNDP country teams supporting health programme implementation, UNV contributes its expertise across a range of functional areas, including finance, monitoring and evaluation, engineering, IT, procurement and specialized knowledge of health service delivery. In addition to offering expertise to enhance UNDP’s health implementation activities, UNV brings unique added value to UNDP’s work in health and development by strengthening linkages to local communities and building local capacities. The UNDP-UNVP partnership is an important channel for strengthening the role of volunteerism in health policy and programming in support of sustainable systems for health.

The RBM Partnership to End Malaria is the global platform for coordinated action against malaria and convenes more than 500 partners. It mobilizes action and resources and aims to form effective partnerships both globally and nationally so that partners can work together to scale up malaria control efforts at the country level, coordinate their activities to avoid duplication and fragmentation, and ensure the optimal use of resources. The RBM Partnership has an effective partnership with UNDP and other partners, to work together to scale up multisectoral malaria control efforts at the country level and coordinate activities. The Global Malaria Action Plan Action and Investment to Defeat Malaria 2016–2030 is a guide for collective action for all those engaged in the fight against malaria.

The Stop TB Partnership was established in 2000 to eliminate tuberculosis (TB) as a public health problem, with the aim of serving every person who is vulnerable to TB and ensuring that high-quality diagnosis, treatment and care are available to all who need them. As part of the 1,500-member partnership, UNDP works with the Stop TB Partnership on several disease-specific initiatives to contribute to the elimination of TB as a public health problem. The Stop TB Partnership focuses on a human rights-based approach to TB, offering tools to help countries implement TB responses that are equitable, gender transformative, and people centered.

The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history, enabled by strong bipartisan support across ten U.S. congresses and four presidential administrations, and through the American people’s generosity. PEPFAR shows the power of what is possible through compassionate, cost-effective, accountable, and transparent American foreign assistance. Fulfilling America’s Promise to End the HIV/AIDS Pandemic by 2030 is the PEPFAR five-year strategy to guide the United States’ contribution to reaching the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of ending the global AIDS pandemic as a public health threat by 2030. In November 2022, UNDP and PEPFAR announced a new partnership to scale key population-led approaches to counter discriminatory laws and HIV-related criminalisation. Together with local key population groups, governments and multilateral partners, UNDP and PEPFAR will help scale successful strategies and tactics on the ground, strengthen key population leadership and engagement to drive progress on the historic 10-10-10 HIV targets, which countries committed to as part of the 2021 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS.