Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #122076

Ellen R. Shaffer, PhD, MPH, Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH), 98 Seal Rock Drive, San Francisco, CA 94121-1437, 415-933-6204, ershaffer@cpath.org

Global trade can increase wealth and health. What policies determine whether global trade improves public health and supports sustainable economic development, or instead undermines equity, access to health-related services, and public health protections? What are the implications of trade agreements for public health in the U.S., and how is the community responding? With little notice, international trade agreements increasingly threaten to pre-empt domestic sovereignty over a wide range of U.S. laws, rules, policies and programs that protect or enhance the public's health, and that provide or regulate vital health-related services, including standards for health care quality, health professional training and licensing, tobacco and alcohol control, occupational health and safety, environmental standards, public subsidies, living wage ordinances, and public administration of health care and water. Intellectual property rules can protect high prices for prescription drugs, and interfere with competition from and access to affordable generic medicines. Public health advocates in the U.S. are seeking greater participation in the advisory process to the U.S. Trade Representative, which is responsible for the Administration's trade agenda, in the interest of transparency and democracy, an effort with significant support in Congress. Increased public health involvement in global trade policy can help document the effects of trade and the trade model established by NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) in 1994. Public health principles can inform policies that promote fair trade across borders while improving the health of individuals, communities and populations.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to articulate the conflicts between current trade policies and public health principles, and critical responses by public health advocates to the NAFTA trade model.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation