Political Economy of Health and Health Policy Group (PEHHP)
Description
The Political Economy of Health and Health Policy (PEHHP) Group seeks to understand the structure and function of political and economic institutions and their impact on population health and the health policy process, including the implications of economic production and trade for health. Researchers within the group bring to their work diverse disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives, including from economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, public health and development studies.
Population health is influenced (and increasingly so, with globalisation) by factors outside of national borders and beyond the health sector. These factors are often described as the structural determinants of health, and are made up of important economic and political factors.
Economic production and trade policy have enormous influence on the health and well-being of populations globally, through shaping the distribution of power, money and resources within and between countries. Political factors – the norms, policies and practices that arise from political interaction (at different levels, including globally and nationally) across all sectors – also greatly influence population health.
Important issues and questions can be studied by taking a political-economy approach to research. These include seeking to understand the population-health impact of organisational policies, seeking to understand why policies and programmes apparently socially and economically desirable are often so difficult to implement, and seeking to find policy or programme solutions that are feasible in a local political and institutional context even if technically second-best.
To help understand these political-economy issues better, take the population-health influence of economic activity as an example.
- On the one hand, businesses play an important role in supporting population health through, for instance, the production of pharmaceuticals and other medical devices and technologies. Economic wealth is a key structural determinant of health and industry plays a key role in wealth creation and the generation of tax revenue, which can be spent on health services and public health programmes.
- On the other hand, corporations in health-harming industries (tobacco, alcohol, processed food and sugary beverages) are key structural drivers of morbidity and mortality, particularly non-communicable diseases. As well as the health impact of their products, such corporations pursue highly nuanced political strategies, including through international trade regimes, that seek to shape the regulatory context – often, in ways that conflict with public health and undermine evidence-based health policies.
Such corporate influence on population health is an issue relevant to countries globally, but particularly now to low- and middle-income settings as they experience epidemiological transitions and bear the dual burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases – and as they are increasingly targeted by corporations due to weaker regulatory regimes. Of relevance here is the impact of attempts by health-harming industries to oppose policies that jeopardise their profits, including through legal challenges under international trade and EU single market law.
Offers funding
No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.
Contact details
Houghton Street
London
WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom
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University affiliation(s)
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Keppel St
London
WC1E 7HT
Last modified:
2023-09-20 14:59:56