These are the strategies and approaches used by the private sector to manufacture and sell products that are detrimental to health have been termed the “commercial determinants of health”.
The field of the commercial determinants of health is still emerging, but represents an effort to systematize efforts to observe, understand, and ultimately confront the drivers, strategies, tactics and societal impacts of commercially driven disease. The Commercial Determinants Research Group, based in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy at LSHTM, conducts research in this areas. Its projects include research on a range of industries – including the tobacco, alcohol and food industries, and the fossil fuel and gun industries among others, as well as research on the use of similar tactics by parts of the healthcare industry. It also researches the cross-industry playbooks used by harmful commodity industries.
- Corporate/commercial tactics to influence on policy/practice/science, including the use of misinformation
- Analysis/evaluation of the effects of commercial activities, campaigns and products (on health but also on other outcomes - e.g. policymaking, guidelines)
- Conflicts of interest
- Application of methodological approaches e.g. discourse analysis; and
- Systems thinking in research on commercial determinants
We are a multidisciplinary group of public health researchers within the faculty of Public Health and Policy at LSHTM. This website provides a focus for our research, which has a strong focus on corporate influence on health and health inequalities. We have a particular misinformation strategies - the industry ‘playbook.’
Our work covers many industries – recent studies have examined the tactics of the alcohol and tobacco industries, the food industry, the firearms industry, the fossil fuel industry, and others. Other research is focussed on alcohol advertising, and conflicts of interest.