Abstract

Corporate activities that influence population health: A review of the literature and proposed framework

Raquel Burgess, MSc¹, Kate Nyhan, MLS IPI², Nicholas Freudenberg, MPH DrPH³, Yusuf Ransome, MPH DrPH¹ (1)Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences, Yale School of Public Health, (2)Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University; Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Yale School of Public Health, (3)Department of Community Health and Social Sciences, CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy

APHA 2022 Annual Meeting and Expo

Background: The commercial determinants of health (CDH) refer to the ways in which actors and structures operate to generate profit and thereby influence patterns of disease within and across populations. Many scholars have called for the development of frameworks to better understand the CDH. We reviewed and synthesized published literature to develop a Corporate Influences on Health Framework (CIHF) which describes the multiple domains and specific corporate activities that influence population health and health equity.

Methods: We searched Scopus and OVID Medline, Embase, and Global Health for articles published between database inception and Jan 4, 2022 that mentioned the CDH and described corporate activities that have been demonstrated or can be expected to influence population health. We used the constant comparison method to synthesize the included articles and build the CIHF.

Findings: We identified 67 articles for inclusion which describe the CDH across twelve industries. We composed the CIHF of ten domains of influence and 94 corporate activities. For example, the ‘labour practices’ domain includes corporate parental leave policies whereas the ‘political activities’ domain includes misrepresentation of evidence in corporate lobbying against health policy.

Discussion: The CIHF facilitates an understanding of the domains and specific activities through which corporations influence population health and health equity. It may stimulate public health professionals to consider ways to mitigate negative corporate influences, such as developing methods to dispute misrepresented evidence in health policy debates. It also lays the groundwork to develop measurement tools that capture the inputs and impacts of the CDH.