How Could We Establish Monitoring and Surveillance of Health-Harming Corporations and Can Governments Be Trusted to Do It? Comment on "National Public Health Surveillance of Corporations in Key Unhealthy Commodity Industries - A Scoping Review and Framework Synthesis"

Anna B Gilmore; Raouf Alebshehy; Stella Bialous

doi:10.34172/ijhpm.8621

How Could We Establish Monitoring and Surveillance of Health-Harming Corporations and Can Governments Be Trusted to Do It? Comment on "National Public Health Surveillance of Corporations in Key Unhealthy Commodity Industries - A Scoping Review and Framework Synthesis"

Int J Health Policy Manag. 2024:13:8621. doi: 10.34172/ijhpm.8621. Epub 2024 Oct 2.

Authors

Anna B Gilmore^{1

2}, Raouf Alebshehy¹, Stella Bialous^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Tobacco Control Research Group, Department for Health, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, UK.
² Centre for 21st Century Public Health, University of Bath, Bath, UK.
³ School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
⁴ Global Cancer Program, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Abstract

In the context of growing interest in the commercial determinants of health (CDOH) which has been defined as "the systems, practices, and pathways through which commercial actors drive health and equity," Bennett et al propose that governments implement monitoring of unhealthy commodity industries (UCIs) (including tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods) as part of their routine public health surveillance. We explore the evidence underpinning that suggestion and provide details on how corporate monitoring might be practically implemented drawing on lessons from tobacco industry monitoring which has been an established part of tobacco control. While governments should actively support such an approach as part of efforts to address commercially driven health harms, we urge caution in governments undertaking monitoring and identify significant barriers to implementation, while also suggesting ways in which those barriers might be overcome.

Keywords: Commercial Determinants of Health; Industry Monitoring; Surveillance; Unhealthy Commodity Industry.

© 2024 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

MeSH terms

Commerce
Food Industry
Government
Humans
Public Health / standards
Public Health Surveillance* / methods
Review Literature as Topic
Tobacco Industry* / standards

Grants and funding

AG and RA are supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, as part of the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use. AG is also supported by UK Research and Innovation funding for “Local Health and Global Profits” (Grant No.: MR/Y030753/1), which is part of Population Health Improvement UK (PHI-UK), a national research network which works to transform health and reduce inequalities through change at the population level. The funders played no role in the research or the decision to submit for publication.