The Commercial Determinants of Health

An accessible multidisciplinary overview for anyone seeking to understand the commercial determinants of health

Our health is largely shaped by the world around us--by the conditions in which we grow, work, and live. These conditions include the commercial determinants of health, the private sector activities which influence our physical and social environments, our available evidence and solutions, and even our discourse and understanding around key health and social issues.

Until recently, commercial determinants have remained largely absent from our conceptual understanding of the drivers of health. The scale of their potential impact necessitates a multidisciplinary and intersectional approach, but no book has yet explored the commercial impacts on health in their totality.

This pioneering volume sheds light on how commercial determinants shape health directly and indirectly through influencing policy, evidence, and discourse. Featuring original cross-sector research, The Commercial Determinants of Health draws on insights from a wide-ranging group of experts who introduce the commercial determinants of health and describe the proximal and distal pathways through which they affect population health. Each chapter further illustrates the health impact of commercial actors, including through multidisciplinary case studies ranging from tobacco to fossil fuels. Together, these essays seek to integrate new and emerging research across public health, economics, and policy to enrich our understanding and responses to the commercial determinants of health.

Nason Maani holds a Lectureship in Inequalities and Global Health Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the structural and commercial drivers of health inequalities. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He previously was Assistant Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a member of the UK PRP SPECTRUM Consortium and co-founded the Commercial Determinants Research Group at LSHTM. He was a 2019-2020 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Healthcare Policy and Practice.

Mark Petticrew is Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Director of the NIHR Public Health Policy Research Unit. His research has a focus on the commercial determinants of health and in particular, the influence of unhealthy commodity industries on health. He is a member of the UK PRP SPECTRUM Consortium which conducts research on the commercial determinants of health and other topics. His other research has examined alcohol advertising and marketing from a systems perspective and includes analyses of misinformation disseminated by alcohol industry corporate social responsibility bodies. He is a co-founder and member of the Commercial Determinants Research Group at LSHTM.

Sandro Galea is Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. He has been named an epidemiology innovator by Time, a top voice in healthcare by LinkedIn, and is one of the most cited social scientists in the world. His writing and work are featured regularly in national and global public media. A native of Malta, he has served as a field physician for Doctors Without Borders and has held academic positions at Columbia University, University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine.