Powerful Allies and Weak Consensus: Towards a Deeper Understanding of how Health-Harming Industries Seek to Influence Global Health Governance; Comment on “Competing Frames in Global Health Governance: An Analysis of Stakeholder Influence on the Political Declaration on Non-Communicable Diseases”

Document Type : Commentary

Authors

1 Faculty of Public Health & Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

2 MRC Epidemiology Unit, School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Abstract

Suzuki et al have identified commonalities in the policy positions adopted at a global forum by commercial sector actors and high-income countries (HICs), on the one hand, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and lowand middle-income countries (LMICs), on the other, in ways that may allow commercial sector actors to block or delay evidence-based policies through the creation of political controversy. The ability of industry actors to draw on the support of the most politically and economically powerful countries for their favoured policy agenda is an important contribution to understanding the dynamics of global health governance in the area of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and beyond. Here we assess the relevance of this paper for the field of corporate actors’ research and the potential avenues this opens up for further study. More specifically we emphasize the need for comparative, cross disciplinary research to examine the power of heath-harming industries and the relevance of these findings for decolonizing global health.

Keywords


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Volume 11, Issue 7
July 2022
Pages 1222-1224
  • Receive Date: 17 July 2021
  • Revise Date: 05 September 2021
  • Accept Date: 19 September 2021
  • First Publish Date: 21 September 2021