This paper charts a brief history of Ghana's chronic disease burden over the last fifty years, focusing on prevalence, risk and illness experiences. Two arguments are made. First, chronic diseases in Ghana constitute public health and developmental challenges, requiring the same intellectual and financial commitments afforded to communicable and infectious diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. Second, to understand and respond to the multifaceted roots and consequences of chronic diseases, research, interventions and policies have to be informed by multidisciplinary - biomedical and social science - collaborations.