Are we selling our souls? Novel aspects of the presence in academic conferences of brands linked to ill health

Corporate sponsorship of physical activity promotion programmes: part of the solution or part of the problem?

“…However, impact has been said to fall short of significant improvements in public health 62 . Threats of regulation have prompted a multifaceted response from the food industry 32,63 including the development of influential partnerships 39 , infiltration of the scientific community 21,[64][65][66] , and becoming significant actors in the health agenda in order to influence public discourse and policy 35,41,67 . Such actions are reminiscent of tobacco industry tactics 38,68,69 and evidence shows that such partnerships and voluntary regulation allow businesses meaningful access to policy formulation rather than changing behaviour to promote good health 17 36,70 .…”

Industry support of physician education in the USA

“…Our analysis found only 0.2% of reported speaker fees were for accredited CME, which leaves more than $600 million of industry-funded CME unreported via the Open Payments programme, when compared with 2014 ACCME data 11. Payments to physician societies and organisations to fund conferences and physician education campaigns similarly remain unreported within the Open Payments programme 25. Also of note, payments to physician trainees or to non-physician clinicians such as physician assistants, nurse practitioners and nurses26 are exempt from reporting, as are research payments to non-physician researchers, including epidemiologists, health economists and other public health researchers.…”

Body mass index and the risk of incident functional disability in elderly Japanese

“…When interpreted in the context of public health, our present results suggest that strategies for maintaining an ideal BMI range might contribute to prevention of disability in the elderly. For example, in order to address the issue of obesity, population approaches have been used to establish better social circumstances, [ 48 , 49 ] such as promotion of physical activities, [ 50 ] regulation of the food environment, [ 51 , 52 ] and elimination of social inequality, [ 53 ] based on research evidence. [ 54 – 58 ] By adopting such approaches, disability prevention in the elderly might be achieved through weight management.…”