Show Notes
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Money Power Health.
As I mentioned in the first episode, part of the goal of this podcast is to bear witness to some of the hidden forces that shape health, and the extent to which they relate to money and power. Sometimes it is hard to perceive, but everything from the quality of the air you are breathing, to the bacterial count in your tap water, or your proximity to a firearm, affects your health, and is in large part a consequence of the distribution of money and power.
And that isn’t just the case with the physical world. Many of us now also spend a large proportion of our lives and interact with others through social media. That digital world is shaped by commercial forces, just like the physical one is. The companies that produce these are sometimes incredibly large, and active political players, through funding political campaigns, co-designing and conducting research, and engaging in CSR efforts, including with UN organizations. Social media platforms are crucial conduits of information, and networks of influence, though often in highly selective and unequal ways.
These are not simply utility providers. In the case of much of social media, while the platform itself is an environment we inhabit and interact with, it is designed by a company that relies to a large extent on maximising engagement, data collection, and ad revenue, through our presence on it.
There has been increasing interest in how social media algorithms may amplify or inadequately moderate harmful content, including hate speech and misinformation, or be used by harmful product manufacturers to promote their products, or shape public discourse.
Research is now beginning to consider the ways in which social media companies, and platforms, might be regarded as commercial determinants of health, and since you probably found the podcast via social media, I thought it would be good to devote an episode to understanding some of the health implications that arise as a result of the nature, incentives, platforms and activities of social media companies, since they are responsible for an increasing portion of our social worlds.
To do this, I have invited two guests. The first is Professor Nora Kenworthy. She is an associate professor in the school of nursing and health studies at the University of Washington, who has conducted a range of research projects on the health implications of crowd-funding platforms and social media more generally. Joining her is Marco Zenone, a researcher and doctoral candidate at LSHTM who’s studies focus on the intersection of public health, misinformation and marketing on social media.
You can find an example of the work Nora referred to on crowdfunding here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8519036/
and an example of Marco's work here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/poi3.188
We wrote a short conceptual article on social media as a commercial determinant of health, which you can find here: https://www.ijhpm.com/article_4248_0357b3eafff74f9eec69cd6d310cd803.pdf
The music in this podcast was by Daniel Maani. You can check out more of his music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4GDF0XnCn78nce0gesJoC7
and here: https://youtalktoomuch.band
More from Money Power Health with Nason Maani
Hello everyone and welcome back to Money Power Health. Today's episode is about what it actually looks like, from the inside, when commercial interests try to shape health policy. My guest is Elena Whitham, who served as a Member of the Scottish Parliament and as Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy in the Scottish Government. That role put her at the intersection of highly contested territory in public health, where evidence about what works collides with the interests of industries that profit from the products causing harm in the most deprived communities. In this conversation, Elena reflects on her own life experience navigating challenging circumstances, through to working at the local level to national politics. She discusses what commercial influence on health policy-making actually looks like in practice, how it shaped her thinking and approach, the importance of civil society and academics, what advice she would give to other policy-makers based on her experiences, if they are to make a healthier, more equitable Scotland. If you are interested in finding out more about some of the issues we discussed, please find some links with further information: -Responses to a recent consultation on alcohol advertising and promotion: https://consult.gov.scot/alcohol-policy/alcohol-advertising-and-promotion/ -Link to the Public Health Scotland evaluation of Minimum Unit Pricing: https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/evaluating-the-impact-of-minimum-unit-pricing-for-alcohol-in-scotland-a-synthesis-of-the-evidence/ -Latest data release from National Records of Scotland on drug and alcohol deaths in Scotland: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/drug-related-deaths-in-scotland-2024/ -Link to a resource hub on tools and approaches to addressing commercial drivers of ill-health hosted by our UKRI Population Health Improvement Local Health Global Profits consortium: https://www.bath.ac.uk/campaigns/commercial-determinants-of-health-resource-hub/
Hello everyone and welcome back to Money Power Health. Before we delve into this episode, you will also see that we have launched a substack with essays on the themes of money power and health. You can sign up to that and read them, for free and ad free, in the link in the show notes. Today’s episode is about the quiet but profound transformation of the UKs national health service. This has been less through a single piece of legislation, but through decades of contracting, outsourcing, and creeping privatisation that often escapes public scrutiny. My guest is David Rowland, Executive Director of the Centre for Health and the Public Interest, an independent non-party think tank prmoting a vision of health focused on accountability and the public interest. CHPI has done some of the most rigorous work in the UK tracking how private companies have become embedded within the NHS, from clinical services to back-office functions, and what that means for cost, accountability, transparency, and ultimately, patient care. In this conversation, we talk about how privatisation actually happens in practice using examples from CHPIs work, and why headline debates about “selling off the NHS” miss the more important question: how market logics and profit-seeking reshape public institutions from the inside out. He discusses what it is like to work with with people who have been harmed through such arrangements and discuss why the impacts of privatisation are not evenly distributed. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Hello and welcome back to Money Power Health. This week we are discussing business schools with Dr. Nora Campbell, Associate Professor of Marketing at Trinity Business School, Dublin, where she teaches in management theory, and science and technology studies. We delve into the historical role of business schools, the evolution of management theories, and the demands of current students. Norah shares her unique journey from studying French and German to marketing and eventually focusing on the commercial determinants of health. We also touch upon the shift from productivity and efficiency to sustainability and the potential future of education in business schools, how such institutions might reinvent themselves in response to ecological and health imperatives, and what the place is of critical scholarship in such spaces. We end with forward looking reflections, as Norah considers the importance of maintaining a balanced life and critically analyzing the structures within which we all work. If you would like to find out more about Norah's research, which spans nano-bio-info-cogno markets, climate change, and the food industry, here are some links to recent articles: The corporate political activity of the food industry in Ireland: an analysis and proposed solutions https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/Supplement_3/ckae144.1511/7843367 Ultra-Processed Food: The Tragedy of the Biological Commons https://www.ijhpm.com/article_4359.html Here are some examples of her public writing: https://www.irishtimes.com/health/your-wellness/2023/01/30/it-delivers-a-taste-bomb-of-pure-pleasure-but-ultraprocessed-food-is-killing-us/ https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41626909.html And here is a link to her university profile: https://www.tcd.ie/business/people/faculty-professors/ncampbe/ The music in this podcast was by Daniel Maani. You can find out more about his music and poetry here: https://www.danielmaani.com
Hello and welcome back to Money Power Health. Justice and health are deeply intertwined, as the same social and economic factors that can significantly impact individual and population health, can also influence a person's likelihood of interacting with the justice system. Prisons are places with some of the most profound inequalities in health outcomes, and if we care about the ways in which gaps in money, power and health overlap, the wellbeing of all those touched by the justice system needs to be part of the conversation. In order to discuss health and justice in the UK I am joined today by two inspiring public health practitioners with a central interest in this area. Dr Nicola Dennis is acting consultant in public health working in the West Midlands, with a particular interest in health inequalities. Dr Chantal Edge is the National Lead for Health and Justice at the UK Health Security Agency and a Public Health Consultant by background. Both have been working together on the Chief Medical Officers upcoming report on the health of people in prison and probation in England. In this podcast, they help me understand who the justice system affects in the context of health, in what ways, how these intersect with wider social inequalities and childhood experiences, the importance of improving health in custody as part of wider rehabilitation, the challenges faced by inmates who seek healthcare in terms of access and stigma, and what efforts are underway to consider and mitigate these challenges. If you are interested in reading more about these issues, I include some links below. Here is a short animation produced based on work by Dr Edge and others on the experiences of prisoners seeking healthcare in their own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IDag_RFus8 Here is a paper by Dr Edge and colleagues (including past guest Prof Martin McKee) reviewing the evidence regarding prisoners co-infected with TB and HIV: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27852420/ In a global context, you can find out more about key facts and figures from Penal Reform Internationals Global Prison Trends (2025) here: https://cdn.penalreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PRI_Global-prison-trends-2025.pdf Music in this podcast was by Daniel Maani. You can find out more about his music and poetry here: https://www.danielmaani.com/
Hello, and welcome back to Money, Power, Health. Today we’re talking about research and advocacy in tobacco and alcohol policy with someone seeking to hold the industries in question accountable—not just through research, but through advocacy and policy engagement. My guest is Dr. Gayle Amul, a researcher and advocate whose work focuses on alcohol and tobacco industry interference in public health policy. Gayle is currently a Senior Adviser for the Alcohol, Drugs and Development Programme at FORUT, a Norwegian NGO. She’s also deeply involved in alcohol policy research in the Philippines, working with the University of the Philippines National Institutes of Health through their Health Promotion Program. Gayle is one of the founding members of the Community of Practice on Alcohol and Substance Use in the Philippines and sits on the advisory board of a tobacco control researchfellowship focused on smoking cessation, led by the Ateneo School of Government. We also talk about Gayle’s journey from political science into global health, her reflections on navigating academia as a space for action, and what it means to be a pracademic—someone who bridges research and advocacy in meaningful ways. Whether you’re a student, researcher, policymaker, or advocate, her insight are helpful in thinking how we can use academic tools not just to describe the world, but to help change it. I hope you enjoy the conversation. You can find examples of her research below: Comparing tobacco and alcohol policies in the Philippines and Singapore: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9606809/ Analysis of flavor descriptors of tobacco products in the Philippines and implications for LMICs: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12992-024-01072-6 Cigarette packaging as a commercial determinant of smokking: Perceptions of graphic health warnings among Filipinos: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953624010700 Corporate social responsibility as a commercial determinant of health: Case study of the alcohol industry in the Philippines: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027795362500499X