Unpacking advocacy strategies for impact in the commercial determinants of health

While much is known about the barriers that prevent policy and governance for public health, less is known about the strategies and conditions that can enable effective public health advocacy. In this presentation Belinda Townsend presents findings from two large scale narrative reviews of advocacy strategies in the commercial determinants of health.

Belinda presents a review of 65 relevant studies that identifies 6 strategies and 4 conditions that have enabled the elevation of public health issues in domestic, regional, bilateral and global trade policymaking.

The second review applies a political science typology to 144 studies of NGO tactics in the extractive, tobacco, food, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, weapons, and asbestos domains. The analysis identify 18 different inside and outside strategies applied by NGOs to attempt to influence commercial, government and intergovernmental organisations.

About the Speaker

Dr Belinda Townsend is Deputy Director of the Australian Research Centre for Health Equity and Fellow at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. Her work examines the political economy of health, including agenda-setting for health in areas outside the 'health' domain such as trade and investment, employment, and social and welfare policy. She has given lectures for a range of national and international associations on the topic of global governance for health and has served as an expert witness for Australia's Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on trade and health.

This event will be delivered online via Zoom only.

Image credit: Image of "ADVOCACY" in white font against black background supplied by Julia Wee, no copyright is claimed.