Usually, free readers get the opening section of this solutions deep dive and paid subscribers and founding members get the full breakdown. We’re lifting the paywall this month to allow everyone to benefit from the piece.
Last week: why work on commercial determinants?
Last week we introduced commercial determinants, the often-overlooked but widespread ways that businesses act to shape the systems we all depend on in their pursuit of profit.
We also shared how commercial activity often lies at the root cause of issues relating to food insecurity, ill health, poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, and community breakdown.
It’s not normal, it’s not inevitable, and it doesn’t have to be this way. On the second Tuesday of each month we will share with you evidence-based tools and resources to address harmful commercial determinants in your life and work.
We’ve been here before
All of the most important public health, environmental, social, economic, and development victories in history have required some form of action on commerce.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other U.S. federal agencies were established specifically to regulate harmful business practices. Citizens, non-profits, and governments have variably compelled businesses to do things differently. Together we’ve advanced vehicle safety, clean air, environmental stewardship, labor protections, access to lifesaving drugs, reductions in smoking, access to affordable housing, and so much more.
As we’ve seen some of these wins reversed and others hampered in recent times, people around the world are finding new ways to resist harmful commercial influence and redesign systems for collective well-being. We can learn from those successes to develop a resistance playbook of our own.
Our economies can work for us
Not all commercial actors are the same. There are enterprises of all sizes striving to be a force for good. There are indigenous, community-based, and alternative business practices that help assure the health and wellbeing of human and environmental communities.
Not all policies are the same either. There are laws and regulations that can stamp out bad commercial behavior and encourage the good. There are also weak policies that businesses prefer that dilute political will, reduce government ability to hold commercial actors accountable, and prevent future regulatory action. We’ll get into concrete examples of how this works in future newsletters.
Not all communities accept commercial harms as a natural part of economic activities. Villages, cities, tribes, and entire countries choose different paths. We’ll highlight those efforts too.
Naming positive commercial determinants opens the door to better models, stronger norms, and clear off-ramps for change. They can serve as inspiration for bringing about the kinds of economic systems we all deserve.
Band aids or root Solutions
Many policy, nonprofit, and philanthropic efforts focus on mitigating the effects of harmful commercial determinants for those most affected, like providing opportunities, assistance, or aid to those who need it most. These are crucial efforts and we can reduce the need for them by putting out the commercial flames fueling the fire.
Many initiatives take some aspects of commercial influence into consideration, like criticising harmful advertising to kids or working with stores to increase access to healthy foods. These are important pieces of the puzzle. A more comprehensive view of all the commercial factors at play can reveal even more impactful levers of change.
Root causes need root solutions. Commercial activities are a major root cause of many problems facing humanity. Too few of us explicitly and collectively work on countering them as part of our strategies to maximise impact.
A lens that sharpens impact
Many of us are already working to advance important causes. Naming the commercial drivers behind the crises and strategizing to shift them can vastly increase our impact. This lens helps us to:
Name and address important upstream forces.
Develop tools to fight back.
Avoid wasted effort.
Address co-optation.
Build cross-sectoral coalitions for greater impact.
This newsletter will build your commercial determinants fluency to help facilitate a shift in perspective that can unlock more strategic solutions and deeper, lasting change.
You’re not alone and you’re not powerless
Wherever you sit, you have a role to play. Every organization, project, and individual can take steps, whether big or small, to address harmful commercial practices. The tools and best practices that each module’s solutions section shares on the second Tuesday of each month will help you develop strategies for change.
Have you worked to address commercial harms? Does any issue feel stuck?
Hit reply or drop a comment. We’d love to hear from you and help provide solutions to dilemmas in future issues.
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Click on any of the links we cite above or check out these selected annotated reads:
By Vinu Ilakkuvan
On this website, public health researcher, speaker, and teacher, Vinu Ilakkuvan showcases examples of communities fighting back against commercial determinants of health. The site takes a community power approach and its blog shares stories of successes and wins communities have had. You can read about why you might feel powerless against giant corporations, how Pittsburg fought a private water giant and won, and why telling smokers to quit didn’t work and what actually did.
By Jennifer Lacy-Nichols and 3 colleagues in The Lancet Global Health, 2022
We’re certainly not the first or only ones looking to share tools, resources, and best practices for addressing harmful commercial activities. In this paper, the authors share their ideas for how the field of public health might fight back, but the suggestions are applicable across sectors. Whether you work in climate, sustainability, poverty, democracy, equity or on any other progressive cause, you might find their advice useful. Their suggestions include: reframe the narrative, advance science-based policy, and strengthen and diversify coalitions.
By Samantha Thomas and 6 colleagues in Health Promotion International, 2024.
This paper offers similar solutions to the 2022 by Lacy-Nichols and authors (above). It’s still worth a read as it goes a little further on some of the suggestions, like on how to shift issues from individual to structural responsibility, and work towards equitable and health-centered economic models.