Is a Government-Led Approach to Surveil Unhealthy Commodity Industries Feasible? Comment on "National Public Health Surveillance of Corporations in Key Unhealthy Commodity Industries - A Scoping Review and Framework Synthesis".

Abstract

Bennett and colleagues' paper aims to synthesize the existing frameworks to identify and monitor unhealthy commodity industry's (UCI's) influence on health "to create a template surveillance system to be used by national governments across industries." In this commentary, we argue that to achieve a robust government-led national surveillance system, some challenges should be considered, such as (a) addressing power asymmetries between government and UCIs involved in policy-making, (b) evaluating competing interests among government constituencies to achieve policy coherence around health issues, and (c) contemplate whether governments rely on private or corporate donors and partners that may threaten financing and operationalization of the surveillance. Suggestions on how to overcome these challenges are beyond the scope of this commentary, but we discuss some cases of bottom-up approaches from organized groups aiming to hold UCIs accountable. We consider them to be emerging effective ways to support government-led initiatives and counter the long-lasting corporate power and negative impacts on public health.