Anna Gilmore, Professor of Public Health and Co-Director of the Centre for 21st Century Public Health (C21PH) at the University of Bath, has urged governments across Europe to regulate the major industries and commercial actors that undermine climate and health protection efforts, following the release of a major report today.
Prof Gilmore contributed expert analysis on how commercial actors shape human and planetary health outcomes to the latest report, published today, of the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health (PECCH), an independent advisory group convened by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Prof Gilmore says: “The commercial drivers of poor human health and planetary degradation are not separate problems: they are the same problem, sustained by the same actors using the same playbook.
"Commercial actors, including the fossil fuel, ultra-processed food, alcohol, and tobacco industries, deploy misleading science, regulatory capture, and lobbying to protect their markets at the expense of public and planetary health.”
“The evidence is clear that voluntary industry pledges or partnerships between these industries and governments, where there are clear conflicts-of-interest, are ineffective. To address climate and health, governments must therefore regulate, eliminate harmful subsidies, and align fiscal and trade policies with health and climate goals. This will require protecting policymaking from the influence of these powerful corporate actors. Exactly this happened in tobacco and was key to progress.”
She adds: “Regulation is not a constraint on the economy; it is an essential climate and health intervention. Governments need to recognise the true costs of commercially driven climate and health harms, which, as the Commission makes clear, far exceed the costs of action.
“I welcome the Commission's strong and bold call to action. I hope it marks a turning point, one that places integrity, accountability and the public interest at the centre of Europe's response to the compounding crises of climate and health.”
Prof Gilmore is a leading expert on the commercial determinants of health and presented evidence to the Commission in October 2025. Drawing on her research and the work of the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, she examined how the same commercial forces driving poor human and planetary health are also obstructing efforts to address these issues.
She demonstrated that these industries deploy strikingly similar tactics, ranging from distorting science, capturing regulators, and lobbying governments, to using corporate social responsibility campaigns to position voluntary pledges as alternatives to enforceable regulation.
Prof Gilmore cautioned the Commission that voluntary approaches consistently fail to deliver systemic change, and that government partnerships with these industries risk embedding industry agendas into public health and sustainability strategies. Drawing parallels with the hard-won lessons of global tobacco control, she argued that binding regulation, improved governance, new models for funding science and independent monitoring are essential to progress and to redressing the power imbalance between public institutions and global corporations.
An internationally recognised expert in public health policy, Prof Gilmore specialises in researching the intersection of health, governance, and climate action. Alongside her role as Co-Director of C21PH, she is Director of Local Health Global Profits (LHGP), part of UKRI’s Population Health Improvement UK, and Professor of Public Health in the Department for Health at the University of Bath.
The Centre for 21st Century Public Health is a globally recognised research institute in innovative public health research, driving change for human and planetary health.
LHGP is a research consortium bringing together the Universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, Edinburgh and LSHTM. It seeks to address the upstream commercial determinants of health and improve population health and equity through action at local government level.