The United States is bad at preventing business from worsening public health, experts say

WASHINGTON – Here in the United States, it is “in” to study the social determinants of health.

There are programs dedicated to the field at Columbia and Emory. Papers on the topic garner thousands of citations. The Federal Department of Health has developed a comprehensive plan to address this topic, which broadly describes the impact of a person’s environment on their health.

The opposite is true for health business regulators, who study the ways in which business affects public health. As one researcher puts it, the sector focuses on “when companies make us sick.”

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There is only one university in the US that has a program dedicated to it. On one hand, you can count the number of US-based professionals. And there’s not a single mention of health commercial issues on the federal health department’s website, Google says.

That’s a shame, because experts in the field agree: The US is doing a terrible job of addressing this subject.

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STAT asked 10 international experts to rate America’s approach to combating the ways businesses cause disease and death in the country. No one gave the US more than a C+, and many gave the country an F.

The list of criminals is long. First of all, there are the industries themselves that most directly (and relatively obviously) survive the health crisis: the chefs behind ultra-processed foods. Tobacco companies. Alcohol industry. And of course, the legislators and regulators and the industry lobbyists who can’t control them are helping to maintain the status quo.

Many argue that the energy sector, the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and its role in climate change, has and continues to make people sick around the world.

One of the experts on what made America, CUNY’s Nick Freudenberg, highlighted the financial industry.

“Their desire for regular quarterly profits and their predilection for moving capital at high speed causes many other industries (food, fossil fuels, housing, etc.) to sacrifice long-term investment or balance public and private interests for short-term profit.” He said.

The United States’ relationship with the health trade is all the more interesting—and worthy of study—because the country as a whole; it has He developed programs to solve these problems. They are not very good, the experts told STAT.

Freudenberg gave to the US because, he said, the United States tried to “control the financial, environmental, labor, and consumer practices of many businesses.” But those same business interests have become “the dominant voice in shaping these regulatory policies.”

Mae van Schalkwyk, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, gave the United States an overall F for its widespread failure to regulate industries.

But she said: “Past efforts at tobacco control and efforts to research ‘health trade-offs’ or deal with harmful industry practices are a definite A grade.”

STAT also asked experts to recommend a policy proposal that could be a first step in addressing health risks caused by businesses. Their answers include higher taxes on unhealthy products like tobacco, alcohol, and sugary drinks, increased restrictions on corporate lobbying and the “revolving door,” and stronger antitrust enforcement.

But two of the four experts in the U.S. had a simpler answer: more research into the state.

“The first step is recognition [commercial determinants of health] As a field and make it a priority to invest in research and programs,” said Nino Paichadez, associate director of the Center for Health Business Decisions at George Washington University.

STAT’s coverage of health business matters is supported by grants. Bloomberg Philanthropists. Ours Financial supporters They do not participate in any decisions regarding our journalism.