Edith is a passionate social activist with a seven-year track record of leading impactful initiatives in health, education, and youth advocacy, earning international recognition for her exemplary work. Awarded the Youth Health Programme Scholarship by AstraZeneca in 2019, and a One Young World Ambassador after the Summit in London. In 2020, Edith was honored with the #Lead2030 award and continued her advocacy, serving as a returning Ambassador at the Manchester OYW Summit in 2022.
Currently, she dedicates herself to providing sexual and reproductive health education to indigenous communities in Mexico, nurturing empowerment, and advocating for women's rights.
The Challenge: How do we fight the growing burden of non-communicable disease worldwide?
While many advances have been made to improve the health and wellbeing of vulnerable groups around the world, there is still a great distance that we must go to meet the targets laid out in SDG 3. This goal includes indicators for reproductive, maternal, new-born and child health; infectious diseases; non-communicable diseases and mental health and health systems and funding.
Specific to SDG 3, AstraZeneca have focused their Lead2030 Challenge on SDG 3.4: to reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) through prevention and treatment and to promote mental health and well-being.
NCDs have emerged to become the number one cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, killing more than 41 million people each year. While they disproportionately impact people living in vulnerable or compromised situations, they are an issue for people everywhere.
Young people are most at risk and they are also the point of great opportunity to change the trajectory of disease. Yet young people are seldom on the global health agenda. 70% of premature deaths from NCDs can be linked to behaviours and habits that form in adolescence. Prevention becomes a critical tool to fight the burden of NCDs.