Social and Commercial Determinants of Health
A useful document to begin with is the Final Report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health submitted in 2008, titled “Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health” . This was a commission set up by WHO, and it is an extensive and in-depth report written with wide consultations and considerable consensus.
A more recent, updated and radical presentation of the structural determinants of health can be found in a recently released paper by the Peoples Health Movement. This is titled Impacts of Capitalism and Imperialism on People’s Health- & the Struggle for Health – of People and Planet– and authored by David Legge. It’s a very clear and exhaustive description of the many ways the current world economic and political order leads to ill health. As a training module for health activists it ends with a discussion on the nature of change required and how peoples movements can led to it.
Another important source of information and studies on the social and commercial determinants of health is the Peoples Health Movements, Global Health Watch. There are six volumes in this series and we provide links to the sixth volume- Global Health Watch – 6- In the Shadow of the Pandemic.
Much work has been done to study the difference across countries and across states of India to provide evidence and measurement to the impact of social determinants on health. A summary of this approach is presented in Punching Above Their Weight: A Network To Understand Broader Determinants of Increasing Life Expectancy.
A more recent publication is on “Illustrating the impact of commercial determinants of health on the global COVID-19 pandemic: Thematic analysis of 16 country case studies” by Toby Freeman, Fran Baum, Connie Musolino et al. The same authors have another paper on this theme: Caring During COVID-19: A Study of Intersectionality and Inequities in the Care Economy in 16 Countries.”
At a much more mundane level we also include a book chapter “Who’s In Charge Of Social Determinants Of Health? Understanding The Office Of The Municipal Health Officer In Urban Areas” which presents some local governance strategies to address some of the proximate social determinants of health. There is also a paper “ Social and Systemic Determinants of Utilisation of Public Healthcare Services in Uttar Pradesh” (CS Verma, 2018) “ that looks at the social determinants of access to services.
This section is work in progress. We hope to develop it better in the next few months.