{"id":18924,"date":"2026-05-25T06:16:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T06:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/decades-after-ottawa-charter-on-determinants-of-health-a-question-of-combating-commercial-influences-health-policy-watch\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T06:16:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T06:16:48","slug":"decades-after-ottawa-charter-on-determinants-of-health-a-question-of-combating-commercial-influences-health-policy-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/decades-after-ottawa-charter-on-determinants-of-health-a-question-of-combating-commercial-influences-health-policy-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Decades After Ottawa Charter on Determinants of Health, a Question of Combating Commercial Influences – Health Policy Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three emerging threats to health: the commercial, digital, and climate determinants of health played centre stage at an event 40 years after a WHO charter shifted the focus of health from individual lifestyle choices to broader social and environmental determinants. Commercial formula company practices are just one case study of how structural factors like marketing can determine health across the life span.<\/span><\/i>
GENEVA\u2013 New frontiers have emerged since the 1986 optimism of a global health document tackling the world\u2019s health inequities: commercial, digital, and planetary health determinants.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cThe world has gotten more unequal,\u201d asserted Ilona Kickbusch, one of the architects of the Ottawa Charter and a renowned global health expert. She pointed to the Charter as a political turning point\u2013one that clearly defined health as a product of political actions and the first WHO document to do so.\u00a0<\/span>
The 1986 document named peace, shelter, education, food and nutrition, income, stable ecosystem, social justice and equity as the key drivers of health\u2013and attempted to usher these principles into action. \u201cAnd of course, in the present geopolitical situation, these drivers become particularly clear,\u201d Kickbusch said in reference to the conflicts in Iran, Israel, Sudan, and Ukraine.<\/span>
Experts within public health repeatedly point to structural determinants of health as the real reasons for overburdened healthcare systems and ballooning national debt.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cIf you think health is just what happens in hospitals, you are simply wrong,\u201d said Dr Maria Neira, former WHO director for the department of <\/span>Public Health, Environment and Social Determinants of Health, <\/span>at an event at the annual Geneva Health Forum.\u00a0<\/span>
Neira also challenged health ministers to focus on the causes of illness, not just the outcomes\u2013diseases. Doing so is proven to be more cost effective as health systems spend billions on hospitals and tertiary care.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cGovernments need to stop mopping the floor and turn off the tap,\u201d said Allison Cox, policy director at the NCD Alliance, who alluded to the benefits of prevention at a separate World Health Assembly side event on metabolic conditions.<\/span>
Both comments pointed to the idea of prevention\u2013tackling upstream determinants of health and changing the environments that lead to disease\u2013as fundamental to a robust public health. Health promotion aims to address the root causes of illness such as environmental, social, and economic factors.\u00a0<\/span>
The convening at the Geneva Health Forum, held on the side of the World Health Organization\u2019s annual Assembly, discussed the gap between the Ottawa Charter’s political discourse on the determinants of health and the reality of implementing them through funding, governance, accountability, and mediating commercial interests.\u00a0<\/span>
Since the signing of the Ottawa Charter, Kickbusch underscored that three emerging issues now fundamentally shape health: those of commercial, digital, and climate influences.\u00a0<\/span>
Exactly how corporations influence health is none more clear than the case of the aggressive marketing of infant formula<\/a>, argued Patti Rundall, Policy Director of IBFAN Global<\/a>, a leading international coalition dedicated to improving maternal and child health through breastfeeding. Her organization, founded in 1979, has fought to regulate the marketing of breastmilk substitutes in light of troubling data on infant health.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cI couldn\u2019t sleep when I found out about this. At that point 1.5 million babies were dying because they were <\/span>not breastfed<\/span><\/a>,\u201d said Rundall, referencing <\/span>UNICEF statistics<\/span><\/a> that babies who are not breastfed at all are 14 times more likely to die than those who are fed only breastmilk.<\/span>
The UN agency also notes that \u201cany amount of breastmilk reduces a child\u2019s risk of death,\u201d and that \u201cbabies who received no breastmilk at all are seven times more likely to die from infections than those who received at least some breastmilk in their first six months of life.\u201d<\/span>
It is structural issues, like the \u201cunrelenting\u201d marketing of infant formula giants, most notably by Nestle, that Rundall points to as undermining a baby\u2019s first few days.<\/span>
\u201cAll over the world, women are impeded from protecting their own and their babies\u2019 health\u2013and often survival, because of factors beyond their control.\u201d Rundall quoted the author and activist Gabrielle Palmer, to an audience at a large lecture hall at Geneva\u2019s Campus Biotech.<\/span>
\u201cWe have to remember that a lot of the blame is put on parents for not doing the right thing. But these are things that are not in a parent\u2019s control\u2013there are structures around women that prevent them from breastfeeding,\u201d Rundall said. She displayed pictures of formula nurse representatives in a developing country in the 1970s with Nestle\u2019s company policy at the time was to provide medical aid if the clinic would promote their products.<\/span>
The civil society outrage and boycott of Nestle that ensued fueled the first consumer <\/span>protection code<\/span><\/a> against these harmful marketing practices in 1981.\u00a0<\/span>
But the discussion around marketing, lobbying, and other forms of influence bans continue. Last year, the World Health Assembly adopted a <\/span>resolution <\/span><\/a>calling for regulation of the digital marketing of breast milk substitutes. Rundall called it \u201ccontroversial\u201d but important.\u00a0<\/span>
The resolution expresses \u201cdeep concern over inappropriate digital marketing strategies used by manufacturers and distributors of breast-milk substitutes, feeding bottles and teats, and food for infants and young children to target pregnant women, parents and carers, as well as health professionals, including with personalized content.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
Furthermore, conflict and humanitarian settings are often the most vulnerable to corporate influence. In Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, donated baby products falsely advertise unfounded health benefits of breastmilk substitutes. Rundall called the practice \u201cjust nonsense. Those babies are now more likely to die.\u201d<\/span>
Because of these practices, 148 countries have laws that to some extent incorporate the original 1981 code protections.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cThe industry continues to fight the legislation,\u201d noted Randull. \u201cWe need people on the ground to close all the loopholes\u2013because it\u2019s very clear that in places with good legislation, breastfeeding rates are higher.\u201d<\/span>
Other kinds of commercial determinants continue to shape health: notably the tobacco, alcohol, ultra processed food, and fossil fuel industries.<\/span>
\u201cWe know early childhood conditions have life long consequences,\u201d Kickbusch said. But she pointed out that translating evidence into policy action\u2013and overcoming commercial and political resistance\u2013 remains difficult.<\/span>
The shift in understanding that health is more than the sum of individual choices but the result of policies and environments is political, the panelists argued.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cWe understood very clearly that health is political,\u201d Kickbusch said. \u201cWhat we now call the \u2018political determinants of health\u2019 was actually at the basis of our work of the Charter,\u201d she explained. These political determinants, as Kickbusch and others recalled, include power, poverty, and other social issues.\u00a0<\/span>
Data from the US demonstrates that being born into poverty is directly correlated with a host of poor health outcomes. \u201c<\/span>Across the lifespan, residents of impoverished communities are at increased risk for mental illness, chronic disease, higher mortality, and lower life expectancy,\u201d the US Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion <\/span>states<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>
Since the Ottawa Charter outlined that health is often a result of structural, social, economic, and environmental conditions, the WHO established a commission on social determinant of health (CSDH) that paved the way to another important <\/span>political declaration in Rio<\/span><\/a> more than two decades ago.<\/span>
The text, which emphasizes collective action and the injustice of health inequities, seems at odds with the current geopolitical context. It expresses what it terms a \u201cglobal political commitment\u201d for reducing health inequities through a social determinants lens.<\/span>
Still, \u201cfour industries kill an estimated 7,400 people in our region every day,” said Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe in reference to the tobacco, ultra-processed foods (UPFs), fossil fuels, and alcohol industries. “The same large commercial entities block regulation that would protect the public from harmful products and marketing, and protect health policy from industry interference,” he added in a WHO statement.
Kickbusch and others point to the important role of litigation against companies as driving the health promotion agenda forward. Lawsuits against tobacco companies, opioid manufacturers, and even social media companies for wrongful deaths have resulted in settlements and meaningful policies.\u00a0<\/span>
See related article:
https:\/\/healthpolicy-watch.news\/tobacco-junk-food-fossil-fuel-and-alcohol-industries-drive-millions-of-deaths\/
Image Credits: FDA<\/a>, The Lancet<\/a>, S. Samantaroy\/HPW<\/a>, World Health Summit<\/a>.
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Three emerging threats to health: the commercial, digital, and climate determinants of health played centre stage at an event 40 years after a WHO charter shifted the focus of health from individual lifestyle choices to broader social and environmental determinants. Commercial formula company practices are just one case study of how structural factors like marketing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}