Corporate activities that influence population health: a scoping review and qualitative synthesis to develop the HEALTH-CORP typology

(2024) 20:77 Burgess et al. Globalization and Health https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-024-01082-4 Globalization and Health Open Access REVIEW Corporate activities that influence population health: a scoping review and qualitative synthesis to develop the HEALTH-CORP typology Raquel Burgess1* , Kate Nyhan2,3 , Nicholas Freudenberg4   and Yusuf Ransome1    Abstract Introduction The concept of the commercial determinants of health (CDH) is used to study the actions of commercial entities and the political and economic systems, structures, and norms that enable these actions and ultimately influence population health and health inequity. The aim of this study was to develop a typology that describes the diverse set of activities through which commercial entities influence population health and health equity across industries. Methods We conducted a scoping review to identify articles using CDH terms (n = 116) published prior to September 13, 2022 that discuss corporate activities that can influence population health and health equity across 16 industries. We used the qualitative constant comparative method to inductively code descriptions and examples of corporate activities within these articles, arrange the activities into descriptive domains, and generate an overarching typology. Results The resulting Corporate Influences on Population Health (HEALTH-CORP) typology identifies 70 corporate activities that can influence health across industries, which are categorized into seven domains of corporate influence (i.e., political practices, preference and perception shaping practices, corporate social responsibility practices, economic practices, products & services, employment practices, and environmental practices). We present a model that situates these domains based on their proximity to health outcomes and identify five population groups (i.e., consumers, workers, disadvantaged groups, vulnerable groups, and local communities) to consider when evaluating corporate health impacts. Discussion The HEALTH-CORP typology facilitates an understanding of the diverse set of corporate activities that can influence population health and the population groups affected by these activities. We discuss how the HEALTHCORP model and typology could be used to support the work of policy makers and civil society actors, as well as provide the conceptual infrastructure for future surveillance efforts to monitor corporate practices that affect health across industries. Finally, we discuss two gaps in the CDH literature that we identified based on our findings: the lack of research on environmental and employment practices and a dearth of scholarship dedicated to investigating corporate practices in low- and middle-income countries. We propose potential avenues to address these gaps (e.g., aligning CDH monitoring with other occupational health monitoring initiatives). *Correspondence: Raquel Burgess Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Burgess et al. Globalization and Health (2024) 20:77 Introduction For centuries, commercial actors and the structures that govern them have shaped the health of various populations in profound ways [1]. Growing attention to this influence recognizes the increasing economic, political, and legal power wielded by commercial entities, especially those that operate transnationally. In the past two decades, scholars have studied this issue through the lens of the ‘commercial determinants of health’ (CDH). In a recent Lancet-commissioned series on the topic, the CDH were defined as “the systems, practices, and pathways through which commercial actors drive health and equity” [2]. Research undertaken to understand the nature of these systems, practices, and pathways has proliferated in the last ten years [3]. In 2015, Baum and colleagues [4] proposed a framework to guide assessments of the health impact of transnational corporations; they suggested evaluating the company’s structure (e.g., supply chain) and practices (e.g., political practices). The research team later applied this approach to investigating the health impacts of McDonald’s Australia and Rio Tinto (an extractive company) [5, 6]. In 2018, Madureira Lima and Galea published a seminal framework describing five ‘vehicles of power’ (e.g., knowledge environment) through which commercial entities shape population health [7]. They suggested that commercial actors engage in practices (e.g., funding medical education) that allow them to exert power through these vehicles, ultimately leading to adverse health outcomes. Several other useful frameworks have been developed to explain the influence of commercial entities on population health. These frameworks provide detailed descriptions of specific types of corporate practices (e.g., corporate political activity) [8–12] and/or describe the activities of particular industries that impact population health (e.g., the food & beverage industry) [8–10, 13]. Other proposed models depict how concepts such as power and approaches such as systems thinking can be used to further illuminate the influence that commercial entities have on human health [14, 15]. The most comprehensive model of the influence of commercial entities on population health to-date was published in the 2023 Lancet series on the CDH. Building on existing models, Gilmore and colleagues [2] proposed a model that describes how the growth strategies and business models of commercial entities determine their engagement in seven types of practices (e.g., political practices, labour and employment practices). The authors proposed that companies’ engagement in these practices exerts influence on the political and economic system, which has downstream impacts on social determinants of health (SDH) such as housing. Lacy-Nichols Page 2 of 18 and colleagues [16] further expanded on this model by identifying four attributes (i.e., portfolio, resources, organization, and transparency) that can be used to both differentiate between commercial entities and explain and predict their engagement in certain practices. The au (...truncated)