The commercial determinants of health practices: a short introduction

The field of study around the commercial determinants of health or commercial determinants of ill-health, corporate determinants, health harming commodities/industries, commercial drivers of NCDs, is a decade old. It encompasses the systems, practices, and pathways through which commercial actors drive health and equity (Gilmore et al, 2023) as well as sophisticated strategies that are designed to protect and promote commercial interests, at the expense of public health, the environment, and democracy (Lacy-Nicols et al, 2022). These strategies are common across varying types of industries and constitute unethical/illegal political, scientific, and business practices, such as manipulation, hiding the truth, coercion, exploitation, violation of workers’ rights, secrecy, deliberate exposure of the public to harm, and many more. This presentation will provide an overview of the commercial determinants, their playbook and illustrations from examples around the world to set the stage for exemplars of industry strategies and tactics of the tobacco, alcohol and fossil fuel industries.