Events
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07 December 2023
GCPH Seminar Series 20: Seminar 3
Location:
Governing the commercial determinants of planetary health inequity
Professor Sharon Friel PhD, MSc
Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Professor of Health Equity in the School of Regulation and Global Governance and Director of the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse and Australian Research Centre for Health Equity, Australian National University
In this talk Professor Friel explored ways to transform the consumptogenic system – the system of actors and institutions, policies, commercial activities and norms that incentivizes the excessive production and consumption of goods and services that are harming human health, widening social inequities and destroying the planet.
With a specific focus on commercial practices, Professor Friel discussed the entrenched power inequities that ensure little effective political and policy attention is given to transform the consumptogenic system and act in the interests of human and planetary health. She explored the ideational, institutional and structural factors that have enabled the pervasive fetishism of market-forces, financialization, hyperglobalization, deregulation, and individualism, which entrench an exponential growth model, consumptogenic economic interests, and an individualised model of health.
The talk concluded with a discussion of ways to recalibrate these power inequities such that planetary health equity goals are at the forefront of policy and action. Professor Friel highlighted the role of compelling narration of alternative ideas, strategic use of institutional processes, and social mobilization among like-minded and unusual bedfellows.
Sharon Friel is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Professor of Health Equity in the School of Regulation and Global Governance. She is Director of the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse and Australian Research Centre for Health Equity at the Australian National University. Between 2005 and 2008 she was the Head of the Scientific Secretariat (University College London) of the World Health Organisation Commission on Social Determinants of Health.
Professor Friel is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and the Academy of Health and Medical Sciences of Australia. She is on the Board of Directors of Health Justice Australia and the National Suicide Prevention Office Advisory Board. Her work examines the political economy of health inequities, with a focus on governance of the planetary, social and commercial determinants of health inequities. Her 2019 book, “Climate Change and the People’s Health”, highlights the importance of addressing the global consumptogenic system.
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