The Impact of Corporate Practices on Health Inequities in the United States
This month, Corporations and Health Watch focuses on the role of corporate practices in creating and maintaining inequities in health among various populations. In an opening commentary, Corporations and Health Watch founder Nicholas Freudenberg highlights how the business decisions of tobacco, food, alcohol, and other industries influence the differential burden of disease by class and race/ethnicity. He describes the pathways by which corporations influence patterns of morbidity and mortality through their opposition to stronger public health regulation and how health advocacy and community groups can organize to reduce health inequities by changing harmful corporate practices.
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BiDil, a Heart Failure Prescription for "Self-Identified Blacks"
In this month's product profile, Corporations and Health Watch reviews the history of BiDil, a medication for congestive heart failure and the first "race-specific" pharmaceutical to be awarded federal approval. In June 2005, the US Food and Drug Administration made history by approving the patented pharmaceutical BiDil to treat African American patients suffering from congestive heart failure. The profile examines the controversy surrounding Bidil in medical and bioethics communities and highlights the dangers of pharmaceutical targeted marketing.
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Interview with Stephen Thomas, Ph.D.
This month Corporations and Health Watch speaks to Stephen Thomas, Ph.D., director of the Center for Minority Health and the Philip Hallen Professor of Community Health and Social Justice in the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Dr. Thomas' work centers on race-based disparities. Dr. Thomas discusses corporate practices as a social determinant of health and health disparities and assesses the varying roles the tobacco, food and alcohol industries have played in Black communities.
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School Lunch and Food Prices
The effect of rising food prices on the global south has been an item of news in recent weeks but how are higher food prices affecting the United States? This month Corporations and Health Watch examines how rising food and fuel prices are affecting the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and other food items sold in school settings. Our report explores how higher prices have a disproportionate effect on underfunded school districts and warns that in the face of funding cuts and higher costs, some schools are bringing back processed junk sold outside the NSLP by private food and beverage companies.
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More researchers are now studying how corporate practices influence health inequities. This month Corporations and Health Watch summarizes a few recent peer-reviewed studies that describe and analyze how corporations target selected populations for marketing of unhealthy products, assess the impact of these practices on differences in health behavior and health, and explore other ways that corporate decisions maintain or exacerbate health disparities.
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