Anti-corporate health campaigns: Seeds of a

Movement? Nicholas Freudenberg

Corporations and Health Watch www.corporationsandhealth.org

City University of New York School of Public Health Left Forum, New York, March 18, 2011

Some starting premises…1. Practices of corporations are major determinant of

health and disease.2. Influence of corporations on health is growing.3. Corporate practices that harm health maintain or

exacerbate inequities in health.4. Public health professionals, advocates and citizens

can act to change corporate practices that harm health.

5. To improve health, we need to reassert public capacity to protect public from special interests that profit at the expense of health.

Some characteristics of anti-corporate health campaigns

• Specific goals related to health • Target of change is corporate practice• Use multiple strategies and tactics to achieve

goals and work on multiple levels• Connect to other organizations and sectors• Intensity and duration of campaign activities

variable• Link personal and political

Definitions

Corporate practices are the actions of companies that advance their business Interests. • Product design• Marketing• Retail distribution• Pricing

Disease promotion

Individual or organizational activities that encourage unhealthy behavior or lifestyles or contribute to unhealthy environments.

Strategies Campaigns Have Used to Modify Corporate Practices

• Community organization and capacity building

• Media advocacy • Policy advocacy• Litigation• Research and

information gathering• Letter-writing,

• Coalition-building • Counter-marketing• Public or creative

protest • Community

mobilization• Shareholder actions• Working directly with

corporations

Policy Agenda for a Movement?

• Provide consumers with right-to-know health consequences of products and companies with duty-to-disclose such information

• Protect children and other vulnerable populations against targeted marketing that promotes unhealthy behavior.

• Make corporations liable for health-related costs of the products they produce and promote

• Increase sanctions for deliberate distortions of science designed to protect corporate interests.

• Level the political playing field

From campaigns to a social movement : what’s needed?

• Defined grievances• Ability to link personal add political • Articulated policy goals• Repertoire of tactics and strategies to advance

goals• Capacity to act across levels, sectors and issues • Defined leaders • Networks, coalitions or alliances of supporters

For more

nfreuden@hunter.cuny.edu

Corporations and Health Watch www.corporationsandhealth.org