In 2025, as a new administration that openly favored corporate interests took power, we watched public health, environmental justice, and international development take hit after hit. Budgets for vital programs vanished, colleagues were laid off, and systemic issues persisted. Amid the uncertainty, along with immense amounts of existential dread, we commiserated with one another, cringing (and often laughing) through the news. While the social sector stretched to a breaking point, the corporate and profit-driven forces shaping our health and environment became more visible and pressing than ever.
Along with this urgency, we also recognized a historically overlooked gap in the way the public health, non-profit, and social change sectors work on issues they care about, whether that’s chronic disease, wealth inequality, or climate change. While much of the programming in these spaces mitigates negative impacts of pervasive issues, it less often identifies and addresses their fundamental commercial root causes. When we do see people talk about commercial determinants, it is often dry and filled with academic jargon.
We want to make the commercial determinants framework (the commercial playbook as we often refer to it) more accessible and engaging. We believe that understanding the system is the first step toward changing it. We’re here to make that understanding a little clearer (and a lot more interesting).
While in the Commercially Determined newsletter and in our consulting work with changemaking organizations we call out toxic commercial practices, our aim is not to point fingers at people working in the corporate world. Our focus is on failing systems that incentivize and normalize harmful activities. Ultimately, our goal is to help public health practitioners and social change advocates understand these forces and enable them to confront commercial determinants thoughtfully, while remembering it is okay, and actually necessary, to laugh at the absurdity of the status quo.
Meet the Founders
Yulia Chuvileva (“Dr. Yu Chu”) and Abbie Cohen
Between us, we’ve lived and worked in 13 countries and visited 31 more, so we know that while the commercial, political, and health systems we inhabit might feel natural and inevitable–just how things are–they’re, in reality, entirely changeable. We’ve studied business and consumer psychology, economic anthropology, international development, and health communications at undergraduate and graduate levels, sharpening our systems analysis, research and evaluation, and dissemination toolkit.
Combined, we have worked in and with groups, companies, and organizations in the private sector, academia, and non-profits working on, among other issues, food systems, public health, sustainability, climate change, poverty reduction, economic development, and modern day slavery. For us, Commercially Determined is a ludicrously hopeful project where we share what we’ve learned and keep learning together. Our goal is to make the ideas and solutions from commercial determinants and allied fields available to the broader social change sector. Our dream is for every organization working to shift harmful systems and solve society’s problems has some internal capacity to identify, understand, and address harmful commercial root causes.
What are the Commercial Determinants of Health (CDoH)?
Commercial determinants are the often-overlooked ways that businesses (through their profit-driven strategies) shape the systems we all depend on and affect public wellbeing and the environment. While some businesses do help to advance the greater good, many prioritize profits over people and have practices that harm public health. The commercial determinants of health framework, spotlighted by the World Health Organization (WHO), offers a lens for understanding these corporate influences not as isolated actions, but as systemic forces. By unpacking these dynamics, we get a clearer picture of what truly drives health outcomes and gain insight into how we can design strategies, policies, and movements that prioritize people over profit.