Policy & Politics talking public health in Milan last month with Editorial Advisory Board member Katherine Smith

In a session jointly sponsored by Policy & Politics and the University of Glasgow Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, leading international experts explored how public health professionals perceive the role of the alcohol, tobacco and food industries in shaping public policy. . The international panel of speakers, appearing at the 8^th European Public Health Conference which took place in Milan on 14-17 October was chaired by Professor Oliver Razum, Dean of the School of Public Health at Bielefeld University, Germany. It included Professor Nicholas Freudenberg of City University New York, Dr Lori Dorfman from the Berkeley Media Studies Group and the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, Dr Benjamin Hawkins from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Dr Heide Weishaar from the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow and Policy & Politics’ Editorial Advisory Board member Dr Kat Smith from the Global Public Health Unit, University of Edinburgh.   The session was organised by Heide and Kat along with Dr Shona Hilton of the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow. This blog sums up the issues discussed and sets out an agenda for future research in this area.

One of the few indisputable truths in life is that we will all, eventually, die but what we will die of, and at what age, is changing across the world, with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) increasingly accounting for excessive morbidity and mortality burdens. The growing prevalence of NCDs is triggering substantial policy concern, evident, for example, in the 2011 UN high level meeting on NCDs. Yet, it is clear there are very different ways of thinking about this ‘epidemiological transition’: it has been framed, on the one hand, as a consequence of the choices that individuals make and, on the other, as a consequence of the strategies Continue reading →