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Commercial industries having a harmful influence on health are “driving us to existential crisis,” a professor of health policy at the University of California has told a public health conference at the University of Sydney.
The conference is examining the ways the food, gambling, pharmaceutical, tobacco, alcohol and other major industries impact health, influence science, and harm the environment.
Keynote speaker Prof Laura Schmidt said “risk factors don’t operate in isolation”.
When thinking about underlying causes of chronic diseases, multiple risk factors such as air pollution, food intake, and stress all have a role “and this is one of the reasons we need to think outside of our silos when we think about these health harming industries,” Schmidt said.
These industries are drivers of poor health, they’re driving us to existential crisis.
She said harmful industries are not always competitors, often working together to influence markets and politics.
If you think about, say, the tobacco industry, it’s a big network of actors and companies and trade associations and so forth. These are interdependent, overlapping, nested markets, with organisational networks that interact.
Schmidt said liver disease, which many associate with alcohol consumption but which can also be influenced by sugar intake. She urged the health experts in the room to collaborate to take on harmful industries and to understand the ways they work together to impact numerous diseases.
Alcohol and tobacco, when consumed together, actually produce more harm than either of them independently, in terms of throat cancer. The body doesn’t respect the silos in academia.
Among the topics being addressed by Australian and international experts on Monday and Tuesday are how companies use social media to circumvent tobacco advertising bans; the powerful vested interests in the gambling industry; and digital marketing of food to children.
5m ago18.55 EST
Victorian premier Jacinta Allan has expressed her condolences for those who died in a horror crash at Daylesford last night.
She wrote on X (formerly Twitter):
The reports of the Daylesford car crash are horrific.
My thoughts are with all those injured, and with the friends and family of those who have tragically died.
To everyone who stepped in to help, and to all the emergency service workers involved - thank you so much.
The reports of the Daylesford car crash are horrific.
My thoughts are with all those injured, and with the friends and family of…
2023-11-05 18:49:40
Post from www.theguardian.com
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