Corporate campaigning and public health: Ten tips and tricks to hold the private sector accountable

Over the past century, food and beverage companies have enjoyed unprecedented commercial success: indeed, every day the top 10 food companies make more than one billion dollars profit between them. But these companies have grown prosperous while the millions who supply the land, labor and water for their products face increasing hardship, food insecurity and poor health outcomes. These food and beverage companies have the power to reduce hunger rates, poverty levels, and inequality in communities around the world, and the public health community has the power to hold them accountable for better health outcomes.

This presentation will discuss Oxfam's Food Justice Scorecard, which which ranks the top 10 food and beverage companies in the world across seven environmental and human rights indicators: climate change, land use, water use; the rights of women, farm workers and small holder farmers; and transparency. It will also highlight other indices and resources that measure corporate impact on food security, nutrition and public health that can be used together for effective advocacy.

It will then outline the top ten tips, tricks and tactics that public health advocates can employ to hold corporations accountable for public health outcomes—from food companies to drug companies to agribusiness and more. These include direct company engagement, investor advocacy, social media engagement, transnational campaigning, legal challenges, and stunts and visibility events. It will also outline strategies for building partnership across sectors that can put pressure on companies to change policies that impact public health locally and globally.