Environments can be designed to assist people to make healthy choices.

Engaging cities and other settings or becoming part of multilateral conventions can encourage addressing health determinants and risk factors.Over the years, WHO has engaged stakeholders in various sectors to collaborate in actions that have yielded many benefits, including challenges related to COVID-19.

More than a decade ago, WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Organisation for Animal Health formed the Tripartite to promote the One Health approach to antimicrobial resistance. The value of this approach is clear, as an association has been demonstrated between action to prevent antimicrobial resistance and a multisectoral coordination mechanism in 82 countries. The pandemic has underscored the need to step up the One Health approach, and the Tripartite collaboration is intensifying its regional activity with the establishment of regional secretariats.

Engagement with the United Nations Environment Programme, now a full member of the Tripartite, has increased in the past 2 years. A joint secretariat and a One Health High-Level Expert Panel have been established to analyse scientific evidence and policy responses; one immediate priority is emerging zoonoses with epidemic and pandemic potential. Support for this work is provided by the AMR Multipartner Trust Fund, which funds work in 10 countries and four global programmes. The Global leaders group on antimicrobial resistance, chaired by the prime ministers of Bangladesh and Barbados, will drive the political agenda.

WHO plays a key role in advocating for engaging the health sector in multilateral environmental agreements and developing international policies on chemicals management, such as the Chemicals road map, which includes case studies from 15 countries. The Global Chemicals and Health Network, convened by WHO, has improved information exchange among its 75 member countries.

In 2021, the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–30) kicked off, bringing together governments, civil society, international agencies, academia and the private sector to improve the lives of older people. The first-ever joint United Nations plan on ageing was established with 12 agencies, followed by a series of advocacy briefs that helped to connect healthy ageing with other global issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Awareness is also being raised through various communication platforms as well as a multilingual knowledge exchange platform, which now has about 1500 unique visitors per week.

A healthy city response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been a focus at the Regional Office for South-East Asia, where countries have been supported in engaging with city networks. Khulna City in Bangladesh was selected for targeted support. The Healthy Cities Network in the Eastern Mediterranean Region was also expanded to include 103 cities and two new countries.

The Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities was expanded with partners to enable over 1300 cities in 52 countries to make their communities better places in which to live and age.