Public Health Roles in Addressing Commercial Determinants of Health

The shared challenges posed by the production and distribution of health-harming products have led to growing recognition of the need for policy learning and transfer across problems, populations, and social contexts. The commercial determinants of health (CDoH) can serve as a unifying concept to describe the population health consequences arising from for-profit actors and activities, along with the social structures that sustain them. Strategies to mitigate harms from CDoH have focused on behavioral change, regulation, fiscal policies, consumer and citizen activism, and litigation. While there is evidence of effective measures for each strategy, approaches that combine strategies are generally more impactful. Filling gaps in evidence can inform ways of adapting these strategies to specific populations and social contexts. Overall, CDoH are addressed most effectively not through siloed efforts to reduce consumption of health-harming products, but instead as a set of integrated strategies to reduce exposures to health-harming commercial actors and activities.

Automated summary

The shared challenges of producing and distributing health-harming products have led to the recognition of the need for policy learning and transfer across various problems, populations, and social contexts. The commercial determinants of health (CDoH) concept describes the consequences of for-profit actors and activities on population health and the social structures that uphold them. Effective strategies to mitigate harms from CDoH include behavioral change, regulation, fiscal policies, activism, and litigation. Combining strategies is generally more impactful, and there is a need to adapt them to specific populations and social contexts by addressing gaps in evidence. Overall, addressing CDoH requires integrated strategies to reduce exposure to health-harming commercial actors and activities, rather than simply reducing consumption of harmful products.