Episode 19: Commercial power, conflicts of interest and health policy with Elena Whitham

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

Hello everyone and welcome back to Money Power Health. This week, we are discussing so called “forever chemicals” or PFAS, a group of more than 10,000 man-made chemicals used in a wide range of industrial applications and consumer products. Of core interest to public health, they are resistant to degradation, meaning they persist in the environment, contaminating water and soil, and ending up in our food chain and bodies, accumulating in people, animals and plants. The rate and spread at which this is happening, combined with the health effects of such chemicals, some of which can affect reproduction and foetal development or cause cancer, has led to a range of new regulatory proposals to eliminate or reduce their use around the world. However, such developments face strong and coordinated lobbying efforts by the manufacturers of these chemicals. To discuss this issue, I am joined by Vicky Cann from Corporate Europe Observatory and co-author of their Chemical Reaction report which documented extensive lobbying in collaboration with a global group of journalists and media outlets. We’ll discuss how industry lobbying is shaping the fate of PFAS regulation in Europe, what this means for public health and the environment, and why the Commission’s receptiveness to corporate influence raises urgent questions about how we protect democratic decision-making from commercial capture. I hope you enjoy the conversation.