BACKGROUND :

Multisectoral action is key to addressing many pressing global health challenges (including NCDs) and critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, but to-date, understanding about how best to promote and support multisectoral action for health is relatively limited. The challenges to multisectoral action may be more acute in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) where institutions are frequently weak, and fragmentation, even within the health sector, can undermine coordination. This satellite session, linked to a recently published journal supplement (https://gh.bmj.com/content/3/Suppl_4 ) addresses the importance of governance in addressing challenges to multisectoral action. In particular discussions will focus upon the importance of high level political commitment; the incentives for competition versus collaboration between bureaucratic agencies, alternative governance mechanisms that can strengthen collaborations across agencies, and the extent to which there is common understanding across different sectors actors about the problem. We will seek to draw upon theories from relevant social sciences (for example, public administration, political economy, health systems governance) to both unpack the problem and strategize about how to proceed.