Health and care leaders and policy makers at every level should urgently implement WHO’s recent framework on engagement, write Maia Olsen, Katia de Pinho Campos, and Guy Fones Recognition that people with lived experience of disease should be equal partners in decision making about health policy and research and healthcare practice has been limited until recent years. The World Health Organization’s 2023 framework on meaningful engagement of people living with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and mental health and neurological conditions takes steps to address the gap, explicitly calling for equitable inclusion that transfers power to people with lived experience, and for their experience to be valued as expertise.1 Meaningful engagement in policy and programme development is often viewed as a “nice to have”; however, it is essential for equitable, person centred, and rights based responses to improving health outcomes. The BMJ Collection on Lived Experience as Expertise (https://www.b