Promoting Health for All and Social Justice in the Era of Global Capitalism: A call to action by the People’s Health Movement

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

Last month, activists from the People’s Health Movement met during the WHO 8th Global Conference on Health Promotion in Helsinki, Finland to critique the official Conference Statement and develop a progressive call for action based on strong social justice principles. The draft below reflects their deliberation and is being circulated for further comment and debate.  Below is that statement, with sections that pertain to the impact of corporate practices on health marked in bold.  Please send comments to globalsecretariat@phmovement.org.

 

source

 

We wish to support the progress on Health Promotion and Health in All Policies and call for actions toward health for all. We note the nature of the contemporary economic and social order as follows:

  • sustainable development is in crisis, with neoliberalism, consumerism and individualism over‐riding the values of community and international solidarity;
  • the crises of finance, food and climate change deny hundreds of millions of people the right to decent employment, social protection, food security, livable communities, housing, water, sanitation and all the social determinants of health;
  • conflict and violence, rooted in gross inequalities and corporate greed, plague households, communities, cities and regions and blight millions of lives;
  • together with entrenched poverty, these factors contribute to large‐scale migration to cities and across national borders; in many cases migrants and refugees are discriminated against and denied their human rights; and
  • inequalities in income and wealth within and between countries, and resultant health inequity, are growing rapidly, with complex roots in the dominant global capitalist regime that functions via unbridled competition, obscene greed and undemocratic governance at national and international levels.

 

As a consequence there is rising popular demand for governments to fulfill their obligations to guarantee social protections and to commit to a sustainable model of societal well‐being that is based on equity, human rights and social justice and that emphasises “good living” (buen vivir) as opposed to unquestioned economic growth.

 

We underline the urgency of required actions by WHO and its member States on key areas identified in the Declaration by Public Interest Civil Society Organisations and Social Movements at the World Conference on the Social Determinants of Health, held in Rio de Janeiro in October 2011; and we urge participants to refer to that document. 

 

We applaud the leadership of WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan in condemning the economic power of large industries, including food, tobacco, soda and alcohol, and their destructive impact on the health of people around the globe: “In the view of WHO, the formulation of health policies must be protected from distortion by commercial or vested interests,” whose tactics “include front groups, lobbies, promises of self‐regulation, lawsuits, and industry‐funded research that confuses the evidence and keeps the public in doubt.”

 

Building on Dr. Chan’s position, we hold that the translation of capitalist values into political power is overwhelmingly responsible for the inequalities in health faced by poor and marginalized peoples. We note further that speakers and discussants in this Conference have highlighted the link between the “Health for All” Declaration of Alma Ata in 1978 and the unfinished agenda of health promotion, stemming from the Ottawa Declaration of 1986. We support the calls in this conference for a ‘whole‐of‐government’ approach that includes Health in All Policies, a social justice framework in monitoring and evaluation of health policies, and the health‐related human rights that promote health for all.

 

We believe, however, that the Helsinki Statement does not sufficiently translate the analysis of the determinants of health inequities and poor health into specific actions which address the unfair economic system which underpins health inequities. We issue the following call to action, recognising that this entails both short and long term political struggle for social justice:

 

1. That Health in All Policies be established as a high priority within the WHO so as to enable it to work across sectors and in particular where there are conflicting interests and priorities, such as trade and investment policies.

 

2. That member states strengthen WHO’s leadership role in health to enable it to legitimately guide the work by all international and multilateral institutions, particularly in the UN system and in the World Bank, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund.

 

3. That WHO resolve conflicts of interest arising from voluntary budgetary contributions that bias its own work toward transnational corporate (especially pharmaceutical, agriculture, chemical, food, alcohol, soda, military and extractive industries) positions and perspectives, over public health by instituting a rigorous regime of binding regulations; this must involve scaling up assessed contributions so that WHO’s governing bodies are in charge of their own budget.

 

4. That member States that govern global bodies, including the UN, World Bank, World Trade

Organization, International Monetary Fund and similar institutions, democratize governance of

those bodies, in order to rebalance social considerations alongside the economic and political

conditions that shape population health.

 

5. That governments and international institutions regulate financial, commercial, labour, and resource depletion and contamination practices, including elimination of tax evasion, to ensure sustainable health, environmental and social well‐being, including worker protection; and to respect, protect and fulfill health equity and health‐related human rights.

 

6. That all governments– regional, national and sub‐national – adopt and evaluate the Health in All Policies approach, led by the head of government and supported by the health and other ministries, in order to eliminate the policy incoherence that undermines population health and exacerbates health inequities and be accountable for doing this.

 

7. That governments, with the support of public interest civil society, ensure participation in policymaking and processes related to Health in All Policies, through community‐led, democratic processes based on equitable gender, racial, and religious/cultural, and social class representation that shape priorities, policies and decisions to ensure accountability in all levels of governance.

 

8. That WHO and governments respond to the watching, monitoring and evaluation by public interest civil society with actions directed at reducing health inequities and achieving health for all.

 

9. That WHO implement and be accountable for equity‐based, publicly provided and publicly financed systems for social protection and health that address the social, political, economic, environmental and behavioural determinants of health with a particular focus on reducing health inequities.

 

10. That governments implement and enforce progressive income taxes, fair corporate taxes, wealth, taxes and the elimination of tax evasion including appropriate international tax mechanisms to control global speculation, to finance action on the social determinants of health, and further explore and utilise innovative financing, such as financial transaction taxes, so as to finance health in all policies and social determinants of health initiatives.

 

11. That governments and international bodies regulate finance capital, reduce its dominance of the global economy and protect health and social well‐being from financial crises.

 

12. That governments, WHO, and other UN organisations utilise impact assessments on health, wellbeing and environment to document the ways in which unregulated and unaccountable transnational corporations and financial institutions constitute barriers to Health for All.

 

13. That governments and the WTO ensure that health considerations are a top priority in the negotiation of international trade and investment agreements.

 

14. That donors remove conditionalities for development assistance for health, and thereby recognize aid as part of an equal partnership among countries of varied income levels under human rights principles.

 

15. That all Health in All Policies efforts work to mitigate climate change, resource depletion and contamination, and other environment health concerns that are crucial to human health.

 

16. That governments and the World Trade Organization change the mechanisms through which the present intellectual property regime promotes the interests and profits of TNCs and the countries which benefit from their exports; and facilitate the worldwide development and equitable sharing of expertise, technologies and scientific data as global public goods.

 

17. Implement fully the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and develop other international treaties that promote good health and address the social determinants of health, such as access to essential medicines and regulation of the baby food, alcohol and food industry, as well as work with the ILO to ensure decent working conditions and standards across the world.

Cigarette Packaging in the UK: the Corporate Smokescreen

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It’s a victory for the hidden persuaders, the astroturfers, sock puppets, purchased scholars and corporate moles, writes George Monbiot in the Guardian.  On Friday the British government announced that it will not oblige tobacco companies to sell cigarettes in plain packaging. How did it happen? The public was overwhelmingly in favour. The evidence that plain packets will discourage young people from smoking is powerful. But it fell victim to a lobbying campaign that was anything but plainly packaged.

Firearms Industry Sues Connecticut

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The Connecticut Mirror reports that the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group, filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Connecticut  General Assembly of bypassing normal legislative procedures in passing its emergency-certified gun violence reduction bill. NSSF is based in Newtown near the elementary school where 20 children and six educators were shot to death on December 14.

Nutrition Standards Won’t Fix Big Food’s Worst Child Marketing Tactics

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

Cross Posted from Corporate Accountability International

 

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Source: Corporate Accountability International

Last month, I participated in an important panel at a childhood obesity conference to discuss the current strategy backed by some advocacy groups: asking industry to market “healthier” foods to children. But as Susan Linn and I recently argued, any marketing to children is harmful, regardless of the product’s nutritional content.

Instead of begging corporations to tweak the grams of sugar, fat and salt that these highly processed junk foods contain, we should demand that industry stop exploiting children altogether. Some advocates argue this approach is too radical. But it’s actually far more practical and ultimately more effective because of certain key tactics that industry uses to target children.

 

You can’t put nutrition standards on a clown

 

A nutrition standards approach to marketing to children fails to address the powerful and ubiquitous marketing strategy of branding. When Ronald McDonald goes into elementary schools or anywhere else he may roam, he (in the words of McDonald’s own CEO) “does not hawk food.” Problem solved, right? Except that the very purpose of using Ronald as a brand ambassador is to get children to associate fun and happy times with McDonald’s. This technique is so effective that young children prefer the taste of food wrapped with the McDonald’s logo. This is true even for food McDonald’s doesn’t sell. Here is how researchers described it: “Our findings add to past research by demonstrating that specific branding can alter young children’s taste preferences.” That’s powerful stuff.

 

Another study of 3-to-5-year-old children found that McDonald’s was the most recognized brand, followed by other fast food and soda brands. (The children were shown 50 different brands across 16 product categories.) These researchers seemed surprised that even very young children could recognize brands, “at a much earlier age than previously theorized.”

 

Branding is a key strategy for every corporation trying to build lifelong brand loyalty among impressionable children. They know the key to getting more consumers hooked on their products is to target children as young as possible. There is simply no way to apply nutrition standards to branding.

 

Stealth ads on the internet don’t have nutrient content

 

Another critical way that food corporations such as McDonald’s target children is through “advergaming” websites. For example, you hardly see any food images on HappyMeal.com, just a lot of fun and games. So improving nutrition standards won’t work there either. Moreover, the name of the game for such sites is to gather information about users, which in this case are unsuspecting children. That’s why the Center for Digital Democracy filed a complaint last year with the Federal Trade Commission charging that McDonald’s and several other food and media corporations violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by asking children to share their friends’ email addresses. But as Adweek explained, McDonald’s engages in even more aggressive tactics:

 

McDonald’s website for Happy Meals goes a step further, inviting children to make a music video by uploading their pictures and encouraging them to share the video with up to four friends, who then receive an email from McDonald’s: “You’ve been tagged for fun by a friend! Check it out! It’s a Star in Video at the McDonald’s Happy Meal Website.”

 

That Happy Meals contain apple slices and milk seems rather irrelevant when you consider how low this corporation will stoop to exploit children. According to McDonald’s internet privacy policy (almost a year after this complaint was filed) the company still encourages children to share friends’ names and email addresses but assures us that such information is deleted after McDonald’s contacts the friend. That’s a relief.

 

Most importantly, research suggests that this sort of stealth advertising can be more effective than traditional television commercials because children are less aware of online ads, probably because they are too busy having fun. According to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation:

 

From a marketer’s perspective, one of the potential advantages of an “advergame” is the ability to draw attention to your brand in a playful way, and for an extended period of time (at least relative to a 30-second television ad) … On the Internet, the boundaries between advertising and other content may be harder for a child to distinguish. This medium does not have the natural breaks between commercial and non-commercial content which typify television.

 

That could help explain why the most recent federal government report on food marketing to children suggested that corporations were shifting their advertising spending from television to “new media” such as online, mobile and viral marketing, which are also relatively inexpensive. 

 

An incremental approach to end food marketing to children

 

Some advocates contend that tweaking the nutritional content of foods marketed to children is a good approach because it’s incremental, while stopping marketing altogether is asking for too much. But why must this be the only way to engage in incrementalism? I can think of many incremental alternative solutions to the nutrition approach to food marketing to children. The possibilities are truly endless, starting with the above examples of branding and internet targeting.

 

Let’s take branding. Even if McDonald’s won’t agree to Corporate Accountability International’s demand to Retire Ronald, there are plenty of smaller steps the fast food giant could take right now. For example, Ronald could stop visiting grade schools. I would consider that a pretty huge victory; far better than the addition of apple slices and milk to Happy Meals. Or Ronald’s image could stop appearing on children’s toys. Speaking of toys, McDonald’s could stop including them in Happy Meals. As could other fast food chains like Burger King, which is now promoting its “BK Crown Activity Box” with various toy tie-ins. Imagine, parents buying food for the food, not the toys.

 

These and many other incremental steps the food industry could take to stop targeting children have the advantage of not being dependent on nutrition standards that industry gets to define and manipulate. It’s also far easier to monitor and enforce a policy such as “no advergaming” than one based on grams of salt, sugar and fat. But most importantly, marketing to children is inherently deceptive and harmful and we should demand corporations stop engaging in this unethical behavior. Because that’s the right thing to do.

Painkillers, Profits and Politics

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In a blog on Open Secrets, Monica Vendituoli reports that two lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health (Chairman, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA.) and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), the subcommittee’s vice chairman) appear to be favorites of the companies that produce some of the most popular painkillers, drugs that are increasingly associated with overdose deaths.

Why Junk Food Can’t End Obesity: It’s the Food System, Stupid

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Source: clagnut
Source: clagnut

In a recent article in The Atlantic, David Freedman argues that demonizing fast food may be dooming many people to obesity and disease and that embracing fast food could make us all healthier.  Freedman’s How Junk Food Can End Obesity uses the familiar journalistic trope of man-bites-dog to make the case that what he calls “the whole food movement” (aka Pollanites, after Michael Pollan) is the obstacle to reducing obesity while junk food companies willingness to modify their products is the solution. 

 

 

Freedman makes some important observations:  he highlights the class composition of the some parts of the food movement, he calls attention to the limits of making processed food the villain of the American diet, and he faults the food movement for rarely considering the scale of changes needed to make healthy food available throughout the country, much less the world. 

 

 

But for the most part, Freedman so ignores the political and economic realities of America that his arguments are silly, like your contrarian cousin who claims Rand Paul ought to be President. I’ll focus on three gaps in his arguments.

 

 

First, Freedman ignores the role of market forces.  He writes that fast food companies should be encouraged to use food technology to market healthier products, claiming that “these roundly demonized companies could do far more for the public’s health in five years than the wholesome-food movement is likely to accomplish in the next 50.”  But how has that strategy played out in the last five years?    

 

 

In 2008, with much fanfare, Indra Nooyi, the Chair and CEO of beverage and snack manufacturer PepsiCo, announced plans to double the revenues from its nutritious products by 2020, from 20 percent to 40 percent. She invested in product reformulation, increasing the research and development budget by 25 percent between 2008 and 2010, while PepsiCo’s advertising emphasized images of health.(1)

 

 

When these new products failed to quickly deliver profits, however, investors and the Board of Directors demanded change. Their argument was mathematical: surveys showed that while 65 percent of Americans indulge in high fat, sugar and salt snacks, only 25 percent choose “healthy snacks”.(2)  PepsiCo shifted gears to re-focus on its more profitable and indulgent brands. Products that PepsiCo calls “good for you” still account for only about 20 percent of revenue. The bulk of the money still comes from drinks and snacks the company dubs “fun for you,” including Lay’s potato chips, Doritos corn chips and Pepsi–by far the company’s biggest seller with about $20 billion in annual retail sales globally.(2) Sixteen of the company’s 22 “billion-dollar” brands are “fun-for you” (but make you sicker quicker) high sugar or fat products and three are diet sodas.(3)  By confusing Big Food hype for their actual practices, Freedman misleads his readers. 

 

Beyond Pollanites: Brooklyn Food Coalition activists Source: 350.org
Beyond Pollanites: Brooklyn Food Coalition activists
Source: 350.org

 

 

Second, Freedman doesn’t consider the political record of Big Food in resisting democratic efforts to hold them accountable for their business practices. According to a 2012 special investigative report by Reuters, between 2009 and 2012, more than 50 leading food and beverage companies and trade associations spent $175 million to lobby the Obama Administration against the federal effort to write tougher — but still voluntary — nutritional standards for foods marketed to children.(4) This expenditure was more than double the $83 million spent in the previous three years, during the Bush Administration.  The food and media companies hired Anita Dunn, Obama’s former White House communications chief, to run their media strategy.  In contrast, Reuters found, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, widely regarded as the lead public health advocacy organization lobbying against the food industry, spent about $70,000 lobbying last year — roughly what those opposing the stricter guidelines spent every 13 hours.(4) And Freedman wants to leave these companies to decide how to improve the American diet and reduce obesity? Who’s being naive now?

 

 

Finally, Freedman writes as if one segment of the food movement, what he calls the “wholesome foodies”, is the entire food movement.  What about the white, Black, Latino and Asian parents from low and middle income neighborhoods in Brooklyn working with the Brooklyn Food Coalition to improve school food in New York City?  The fast food workers organizing in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and elsewhere?  The many groups looking to convert SNAP from a subsidy for Big Food into a force for health for poor and hungry Americans?  By demonizing one admittedly influential sector of the food movement as if its views were monolithic, Freedman missed an opportunity for constructive debate within the movement. By parroting the slurs on the food movement that Big Food executives like to use at their shareholder meetings (elitists who look to take choices away from poor Americans), Freedman ends up reinforcing those stereotypes. 

 

 

In the final analysis, it’s not processed food, it’s not McDonald’s and it’s not soda that are the chief reasons our food system contributes so much to poor health.  Rather, it’s a food—and economic — system that values the profits of a handful of big companies more highly than the health and nutritional needs of the population or the well-being of the environment that sustains life. 

 

 

References

 

1. Bauerlein V.  PepsiCo chief defends her strategy to promote ‘good for you’ foods. The Wall Street Journal.June 28, 2011. Available at:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303627104576412232408827462.html. Accessed August 9, 2012.

2. Esterl M, Bauerlien V.  PepsiCo wakes up and smells the cola. The Wall Street Journal. June 28,2011:B1.

3. PepsiCo. PepsiCo Welcomes our newest Billion-Dollar Brands. Advertisement. New York Times, January 26, 2012, p. B5.

4. Wilson D, Roberts J. Special Report: How Washington went soft on childhood obesity. Reuters. Available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/27/us-usa-foodlobby-idUSBRE83Q0ED20120427. Published on April 27, 2012. Accessed on August 21, 2012. 

 

Drinks Industry Resists Efforts to Phase Out Its Sponsorship of Sports Events

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A renewed effort in the United Kingdom to phase out sponsorship of sports events by the alcohol industry has elicited predictable industry responses, reports the Irish Times. Senior sporting figures have been lined up to warn of the dangers of removing sponsorship by alcohol companies. As usual, alcohol companies are positioning themselves as philanthropists. Yet the reality is that sponsorship helps secure a whole new generation of drinkers. Read more.

Do Car Pollution Regulations Lead to Cleaner Air?

Posted on by Corporations and Health Watch

In his recent California speech on the environment, President Barack Obama said, “At the time when we passed the Clean Air Act, to try to get rid of some of this smog, some of the same doomsayers were saying, ‘New pollution standards will decimate the auto industry.’ Guess what? It didn’t happen. Our air got cleaner.” PoliticFact.com rates his claim. 

Nutrition, Inc: In-depth Story in Progressive Magazine

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Cross Posted from EatDrinkPolitics

Source: EatDrinkPolitics
Source: EatDrinkPolitics

 

Proving that a good story just won’t die, the current issue of the Progressive takes an in-depth look at my report from January on the conflicted corporate sponsorships of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. And good timing too, because registered dietitian Andy Bellatti’s Change.org petition on this subject is gathering steam. You can download the Progressive article here. Thanks to investigative journalist Christopher Cook for such great coverage. Is anyone at the Academy listening yet?

Top Medicare Prescribers Rake in Speaking Fees From Drug Makers

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An investigation by Pro Publica’s Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber and Jennifer LaFleur found that at least 17 of the top 20 prescribers of Bystolic, a blood pressure medicine, in Medicare’s prescription drug program in 2010 have been paid by the drug maker Forest Laboratories to deliver promotional talks. In 2012, they together received $283,450 for speeches and more than $20,000 in meals. Pay-to-prescribe is illegal, but these doctors say they haven’t been influenced by the money they get for promoting drugs they also prescribe to large numbers of their patients. Read More.