Our most ambitious policies to protect public health often threaten powerful commercial interests. Yet attention (and policy action) has been largely limited to a narrow segment of the commercial world (tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed foods).
These industries are but the tip of the commercial determinants of health (CDoH) iceberg. Looking beyond this ‘harmful trinity’, we can see that pharmaceutical patents undermine access to medicines, cheap housing risks lives and mental health, and chemicals from growing cotton pollute community water.
It we want to truly challenge harms arising from CDoH, we need a wider gaze. With that wider gaze comes political challenges. These industries are far less black and white and often play crucial roles in the economy. They are well-connected politically. Understanding and challenging this political influence is crucial to efforts to prioritise people and the planet over profits.
This webinar will help participants to think critically about how diverse commercial actors influence health and develop a deeper understanding of corporate political influence and how health professionals, advocates (and others!) can strategically intervene.
Dr Lacy-Nichols is an NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow. Her research seeks to understand the relationships between corporations, politics and health, part of the emerging field of Commercial Determinants of Health (CDoH).
Her current program of work explores the opportunities and challenges for systematically monitoring corporate political activities such as lobbying, political donations and the revolving door, and draws on concepts and methods from political science, business studies and data analytics.
Dr Lacy-Nichols is nationally and internationally recognised for her research. She co-led the landmark 2023 Lancet series on CDoH and supported the development of the WHO's forthcoming global report on CDoH.
