University of Bath academics warn that governments must end partnerships with harmful industries such as alcohol, ultra-processed food and gambling in order to protect public health.

Professor Anna Gilmore, Dr Rachel Barry and Dr Alice Fabbri argue that governments must take lessons from the progress that has been made in tackling the harms of tobacco use. This progress, they claim, was enabled by addressing the irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy.

The authors, from the University of Bath’s Centre for 21st Century Public Health, Tobacco Control Research Group and Department for Health, suggest that governments should no longer work with health-harming industries due to their significant conflicts of interest and evidence that these partnerships do not benefit public health.

In their paper, titled Why addressing conflicts of interest is essential to progress in reducing commercially driven health harms: Lessons from tobacco, the authors suggest that the lessons from tobacco control should be applied to other industries. In particular, lessons on understanding and addressing conflicts of interest in policy, professional practice and science have particular relevance to these other industries. Understanding these lessons, they argue, is crucial for tackling harms caused by commercial interests and improving population health on a global level.

Drawing on decades of research and the lessons of tobacco control, the authors explain how industries with vested interests use partnerships, youth prevention programmes, funding of science, and voluntary regulation schemes to position themselves as responsible actors – while blocking effective public health action behind the scenes.

Anna Gilmore, Professor of Public Health, Co-Director Centre for 21st Century Public Health at the University of Bath, comments:

This government has recognised the urgent need to prevent and not just treat ill health, but it has not yet recognised that if the industries causing this harm are at the policy-making table, we will not get the prevention policies we need. The public understands such conflicts. That is one reason why trust in public institutions is at an all-time low. If this government is to restore this trust, deliver its promised ‘clean up’ of public life and prevent ill health, an essential first step is to exclude health-harming industries from policy-making.

Without such action, the NHS will not cope with the vast scale of commercially driven health harms and British taxpayers will continue to effectively subsidise the hugely profitable tobacco, food, alcohol, gambling and fossil fuel industries causing this harm. The time for action is now.

This paper appears in the newly released special issue of the Future Healthcare Journal, guest edited by consultant physician, academic and broadcaster Professor Chris van Tulleken. The June 2025 issue of FHJ brings together leading voices in public health to explore how the tobacco, alcohol, food, pharmaceutical and gambling industries actively create conflicts of interest with scientists, clinicians, academics, regulators and charities.

These voices call on decision-makers to recognise and act on the systemic harm caused by commercial industries where profit-driven tactics are contributing to ill health.