About this event
This panel is co-hosted by the Centre for Global Health, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto.
Participants that attend all of the events in this series will receive a certificate of completion.
Seminar Schedule
- November 22nd - Seminar 1: Corporate Influences on Health and Healthcare
- December 13th - Seminar 2: Part of the problem or part of the solution? Industry and harm reduction
- January 26th - Seminar 3: Regulating corporations: The interface between corporations and the public sector
- February 10th - Seminar 4: Manufacturing evidence: Industry sponsorship and conduct of research
- March 11th - Seminar 5: The Shared Strategies of Health-Harming Corporations to Influence the Policy Process
- April 19 - Seminar 6: TBA
About This Series
The corporation is arguably the most powerful social and economic institution globally, with unprecedented power to shape scientific evidence, public policy, and lifestyles. Corporations share practices including advertising, public relations, and lobbying that are common across industries and which impact population health and health equity. For example, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are currently the leading cause of mortality globally and account for 71% of all deaths according to the World Health Organization (WHO).1 The main risk factors for developing NCDs as identified by the WHO include harmful alcohol drinking, tobacco use, physical inactivity, and the consumption of unhealthy diets rich in overly processed foods.2 The United Nations has addressed NCDs in their Sustainable Development Goal target 3.4, which is to reduce premature mortality from NCDs by a third by 2030.3 At the same time, medically-related industry, including pharmaceutical, medical device, infant formula, and health technology companies have pervasive influence over the production of health evidence, the dissemination of health innovations, and the development of clinical practice and health policy. Critical public health analysis of the power of the corporate sector in influencing public health outcomes informed the field referred to as the commercial determinants of health. The Lancet Global Health defines the commercial determinants of health as “strategies and approaches used by the private sector to promote products and choices that are detrimental to health”.4 Corporate practices can thus be critically examined and strategically challenged in order to contribute to healthy, evidence-based public policy solutions. The Dalla Lana School of Public Health’s Centre for Global Health in partnership with the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto are hosting a seminar series entitled Health Inc: Corporations, capitalism, and the commercial determinants of health. The objective of this seminar series is to create a forum to promote conversations, research training and collaboration across sectors and disciplines regarding the impact of corporations on health. Themes that will be explored during the seminar series include but are not limited to industry’s role in harm reduction, public-private partnerships, conflicts of interests, industry sponsorship and conduct of research, health data and data justice, sustainable health care, and the role of corporations in the climate crisis and inequities.
1. World Health Organization. Non communicable diseases. World Health Organization; 2021.
2. World Health Organization. Noncommunicable diseases country profiles 2018. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2018.
3. NCD Countdown 2030 collaborators. (2020). NCD Countdown 2030: pathways to achieving Sustainable Development Goal target 3.4. Lancet Public Health. 396(10255): 918-934 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31761-X
4. Kickbusch, I., Allen, L., Franz, C. (2016). The commercial determinates of health. Lancet. 4(12): 895-896, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(16)30217-0
UPCOMING SEMINAR
About Seminar Five - March 11th - 12:30pm - 2pm EST
Title: The Shared Strategies of Health-Harming Corporations to Influence the Policy Process.
This seminar will focus on better understanding the cross-cutting strategies that health-harming industries employ to impact public health policies.
The illicit trade in legal drugs is often seen as a law enforcement issue. Focusing on the case studies of tobacco and cannabis, Benoît Gomis will demonstrate it is also a significant public health challenge, in which transnational corporations are playing a major part. The tobacco industry has often been directly involved or complicit in smuggling their own products, while playing a central but dubious role in shaping research, policy making, and law enforcement practices on the topic. Major Canadian cannabis companies are increasingly mimicking some Big Tobacco tactics, in the name of anti-illicit trade and at the expense of public health.
Joana Lima Madureira will discuss a framework to systematically study corporations and other commercial interests as a distal, structural, societal factor that causes disease and injury. Our framework offers a systematic approach to mapping corporate activity, allowing us to anticipate and prevent actions that may have a deleterious effect on population health.
Speakers:
Dr. Joana Lima Madureira is a Health Policy Advisor at the World Health Organization Country Office in Kyrgyzstan. Prior to working in Kyrgyzstan, she was a Technical Officer for Health Equity and Social Determinants of Health also with WHO. Joana trained as a Medical Doctor, after which she pursued a Master in Global Health. After working as a public health advocate at the Brussels based European Public Health Alliance she became increasingly interested in the commercial determinants of health, how they shape the consumption of unhealthy commodities and population health. She decided to pursue a PhD in this area and in 2019 defended her thesis “The commercial determinants of health, a theoretical framework and empirical applications” at the University of Oxford.
Benoît Gomis is a Lecturer at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and a Research Fellow with the Pandemics & Borders Project at Simon Fraser University. Benoît’s research focuses on the illicit trade in drugs (in particular the role of the industry in shaping responses to it), terrorism, and borders. In an independent capacity, he works with a number of organizations including governments, think tanks, NGOs, companies, and universities. He previously worked with the University of Bath and SFU's Global Tobacco Control Research Programme, where he focused on the tobacco industry and the illicit tobacco trade. Benoît is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, and a frequent contributor to Jane’s Intelligence Review and World Politics Review. He was educated at Sciences Po in Aix-en-Provence, Loyola University Chicago, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Suggested Readings:
• Why we can’t let cannabis become the next Big Tobacco
***Zoom link will be shared two hours prior to the meeting to everyone who registers***
Register Here
