Study protocol: Assessing the association between corporate political influence and implementation of policies to tackle commercial determinants of non-communicable diseases: a cross-sectional analysis of 172 countries

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the association between corporate political influence and implementation of WHO-recommended policies to constrain sales, marketing and consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy foods. Design: Cross-sectional analysis using national datasets from 2015, 2017, and 2020. Setting: Global analysis of data from 172 of the 194 WHO Member States Main outcome measures: We will use random effects multivariate regression to test the association between implementation status of 12 WHO-recommended tobacco, alcohol, and diet policies and corporate political influence, a metric that combines disclosure of campaign donations, public campaign finance, corporate campaign donations, legislature corrupt activities, disclosure by politicians, and executive oversight. We will control for GDP per capita, population aged >65 years, urbanization, level of democracy, continent, ethno-linguistic fractionalization, legal origin, Small Island Developing States, and Muslim population (to capture alcohol policy differences). We will include year dummies to address the possibility of a spurious relationship between the outcome variable and the independent variables of interests. For example, there may be an upward global trend in policy implementation that coincides with an upward global trend in in the regulation of lobbying and campaign finance. Ethics and dissemination: As this study uses publicly available data, ethics approval is not required. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. Findings will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication in the academic literature. All data, code, and syntax will be made publicly available on GitHub.