Draft:Global Campaign against Headache

The Global Campaign against Headache is an international collaboration between the World Health Organization (WHO). , nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions and individuals. Its purpose is to reduce the burden of headache worldwide.

Headache disorders, including migraine, are globally the third highest non-fatal cause of lost health (sometimes expressed as years lost to disability YLDs). The associated financial costs, both to people affected and to national economies, are very large. These – lost health and financial costs – are the burden of headache.

Formally launched in Copenhagen in 2004, the Global Campaign has been led since 2009 by Lifting The Burden, a nongovernmental organization registered by the Charity Commission for England and Wales , with its academic base at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Objectives
The Global Campaign’s purpose is achieved through three principal objectives.

The first objective is to know the size and nature of the headache problem. In 2004, when the Global Campaign commenced its activities, very little was known of the prevalence or burden of any headache disorder for more than half the people of the world: most of those living outside Western Europe or North America. The first objective is being achieved in two steps: bringing together all of the published worldwide evidence of the burden attributable to headache, and, where the available evidence is lacking or of poor quality, setting up new studies – population-based in adults, and schools-based in children and adolescents, developing and using standardized consensus-based methodologies.

The Campaign uses this knowledge in pursuit of its second objective: full awareness, among governments and other health-policy makers, of the burdens of lost health and wellbeing attributable to headache disorders and of their historic under-treatment everywhere. This objective is being strongly promoted through the Campaign’s collaborations with WHO and with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the Global Burden of Disease Study.

The third objective, and the ultimate purpose of the Global Campaign, is to propose a health-care solution for headache that may be implemented by policy makers everywhere. This solution must be evidence-based, equitable and feasible, adaptable in accordance with local systems, resources and needs, and economically justified. Since the management of most headache belongs in primary care, the health-care solution in all countries is structured headache services based in, and integrated with, primary care services. Better diagnosis and better care within these services are fostered through education of (non-expert) health-care providers in primary care, supported by a range of clinical management aids , and maintained through application of validated quality measures