An official website of the United States government
Abstract What is unknown about commercial lobbying is far greater than what is known. These omissions distort our understanding of the extent and nature of business influence on politics. Especially when businesses engage in practices that harm health, it is crucial for public health advocates to understand corporate lobbying to counter its influence. Our study proceeded in three phases. First, based on an international audit, we developed a list of the categories of information about lobbying that could be disclosed under four groups (lobby firms, lobbyists, organizations and activities) and benchmarked Australian lobbyist registers against this list. Second, we manually extracted data from lobbyist registers in eight jurisdictions, cleaned the data and created a relational model for analysis. Finally, we classified a sample of organizations as public health organizations or harmful industries to compare their activities. We identified 61 possible categories of information about lobbying in international lobbyist registers. When applied to Australian lobbyist registers, Queensland covered the widest range of categories (13, 21%), though many lacked detail and completeness. Australian lobbyist registers provided data on 462 third-party lobby firms across Australia, currently employing 1036 lobbyists and representing 4101 organizations. Several of these represented harmful industries, with gambling interests hiring the most third-party lobby firms. Ultimately, Australian lobbyist registers do not provide enough information to understand the full extent of lobbying activities taking place. Political transparency is important for public health actors to be able to monitor corporate political activity and to protect policy-making from vested interests.
more »
« less
A proposal for systematic monitoring of the commercial determinants of health: a pilot study assessing the feasibility of monitoring lobbying and political donations in Australia
Abstract Background The commercial determinants of health include a range of practices to promote business interests, often at the expense of public health. Corporate political practices, such as lobbying and campaign donations, are used to influence policy makers and foster a political and regulatory environment conducive to business interests. Despite recognition of their public health importance, thus far there are relatively few efforts to systematically monitor commercial political practices. Methods A pilot study was conducted to explore the feasibility of systematically monitoring two political practices – lobbying and political contributions – for ‘harmful industries’ (alcohol, gambling, ultra-processed food and tobacco industries) in Australia. Potential data sources were reviewed to compare data availability and detail. Two publicly available datasets were selected for the pilot: ministerial diaries for New South Wales and annual donor filings from the Australian Electoral Commission. Google Data Studio was used to analyse and visualise findings. Results The pilot study resulted in the creation of several interactive charts and dashboards that supported analysis and interrogation of the data. These charts helped to easily convey the volume of lobbying and political donations, as well as changes over time. For example, we found that between July 2014 and December 2020, NSW ministers had 20,607 meetings, of which 634 meetings were with harmful industries. And between 1998 and 2020, a total of $576,519,472 disclosed donations were made to political parties and other entities, of which $35,823,937 were from harmful industries. Conclusions Opportunities to develop a program to monitor commercial political practices face several challenges including access barriers arising from poor availability and detail of data, technical barriers arising from the format of data disclosures and coding challenges arising from the diverse nature of the commercial sector. Despite these challenges, our pilot study demonstrates the potential to implement a monitoring program and to expand its scope to other commercial determinants of health.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2147334
- PAR ID:
- 10397714
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Globalization and Health
- Volume:
- 19
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1744-8603
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract BackgroundTo support public health researchers and advocates seeking to challenge the influence of powerful commercial actors on health, it is necessary to develop a deeper understanding of corporate political activities. This project explores political science scholarship analysing lobbying to identify new datasets and research methods that can be applied to public health and stimulate further research and advocacy. MethodsWe undertook a systematic scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey literature reports analysing the practice of lobbying. Titles and abstracts of 4533 peer-reviewed and 285 grey literature reports were screened, with 233 peer-reviewed and 280 grey literature reports assessed for eligibility. We used a two-stage process for data extraction. In stage 1, we collected two pieces of information from all included studies: data sources and indicators used to measure lobbying. For the second stage, data extraction was limited to 15 studies that focused on meetings. ResultsThe most common indicators used to measure lobbying activity were: registrations of active lobbyists; expenditure on lobbying; meetings; written comments and submissions made to government consultations; bills; and committee participation. A range of different data sources were used to analyse lobbying, including from governments, not-for-profits and commercial sources. All 15 studies analysing lobbyist meetings were from high-income contexts. The studies analysed three key variables: the types of government actors targeted by lobbying; the policies of interest; and the lobbyists and/or their clients. The studies used a range of taxonomies to classify policy issues and the types of actors engaged in lobbying. All studies discussed challenges with accessing and analysing lobbying data. ConclusionsThere is enormous potential for public health research and advocacy concerned with commercial lobbying to learn from political science scholarship. This includes both conceptual frameworks and sources of empirical data. Moreover, the absence of good quality transparency internationally emphasises the importance of advocacy to support policy change to improve the quality of political transparency to make it easier to monitor commercial lobbying.more » « less
-
Lacy-Nichols and Williams’ examination of the food industry illustrates how it altered its approach from mostly oppositional to regulation to one of appeasement and co-option. This reflection builds upon this by using a commercial determinants of health (CDoH) lens to understand, expose and counter industry co-option, appeasement and partnership strategies that impact public health. Lessons learned from tobacco reveal how tobacco companies maintained public credibility by recruiting scientists to produce industry biased data, co-opting public health groups, gaining access to policy elites and sitting on important government regulatory bodies. Potential counter solutions to food industry appeasement and co-option include (i) understanding corporate actions of health harming industries, (ii) applying mechanisms to minimize industry engagement, (iii) dissecting industry relationship building, and (iv) exposing the negative effects of public private partnerships (PPPs). Such counter-solutions might help to neutralise harmful industry practices, products and policies which currently threaten to undermine healthy food policies.more » « less
-
Objective:Develop workflows and billing processes for a Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist (CDCES)-led remote patient monitoring (RPM) program to transition the Teamwork, Targets, Technology, and Tight Control (4T) Study to our clinic’s standard of care. Methods:We identified stakeholders within a pediatric endocrinology clinic (hospital compliance, billing specialists, and clinical informatics) to identify, discuss, and approve billing codes and workflow. The group evaluated billing code stipulations, such as the timing of continuous glucose monitor (CGM) interpretation, scope of work, providers’ licensing, and electronic health record (EHR) documentation to meet billing compliance standards. We developed a CDCES workflow for asynchronous CGM interpretation and intervention and initiated an RPM billing pilot. Results:We built a workflow for CGM interpretation (billing code: 95251) with the CDCES as the service provider. The workflow includes data review, patient communications, and documentation. Over the first month of the pilot, RPM billing codes were submitted for 52 patients. The average reimbursement rate was $110.33 for commercial insurance (60% of patients) and $46.95 for public insurance (40% of patients) per code occurrence. Conclusions:Continuous involvement of CDCES and hospital stakeholders was essential to operationalize all relevant aspects of clinical care, workflows, compliance, documentation, and billing. CGM interpretation with RPM billing allows CDCES to work at the top of their licensing credential, increase clinical care touch points, and provide a business case for expansion. As evidence of the clinical benefits of RPM increases, the processes developed here may facilitate broader adoption of revenue-generating CDCES-led care to fund RPM.more » « less
-
Corporations in unhealthy commodity industries (UCI) have growing influence on the health of national populations through practices that lead to increased consumption of unhealthy products. The use of government-led public health surveillance is best practice to better understand any emerging public health threat. However, there is minimal systematic evidence, generated and monitored by national governments, regarding the scope of UCI corporate practices and their impacts. This study aims to synthesise current frameworks that exist to identify and monitor UCI influence on health to highlight the range of practices deployed by corporations and inform future surveillance efforts in key unhealthy commodity industries.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-022-00900-x
