A new searchable database has launched to help local authorities, public health practitioners, and researchers explore evidence to tackle the commercial determinants of health (CDoH), the industry practices and market structures that influence population health outcomes.
The Local Health Global Profits (LHGP) interactive database brings together evidence-based actions spanning nine key sectors: food and drink, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, fossil fuels, pharmaceutical, built environment, labour and working conditions, and waste, water and sanitation from a review of published evidence reviews.
Moving beyond individual behaviour change
Dr Kristina Kim, one of the website's developers, explains that the term "actions" was chosen deliberately to capture a wide spectrum of interventions, from systemic changes to policymaking, such as adopting "Health in All Policies" approaches, through to specific sector regulations, such as bans on advertising for foods high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) or low emission zones.
"The focus reflects LHGP's emphasis on upstream and population-level change rather than interventions aimed at individual behaviour," she says.
Multiple ways to search the evidence
What sets the resource apart is how the actions can be filtered and cross-referenced. Users can search by: - Lancet Model facets: the levels, drivers, and practices set out in the Lancet Model of CDoH, a framework first introduced in a 2023 paper as part of The Lancet's series on commercial determinants of health. Levels range from the political and economic system down to final health and equity outcomes, while drivers cover norms, externalities and power, and practices span political, scientific, marketing, supply chain, labour, financial and reputational management activity.
DEPTH mechanisms of change: drawn from a 2024 framework for categorising how population health interventions work, covering socio-cultural, cognitive, physical environment, and financial mechanisms.
Geographic scope: covering global, European, UK-specific, and other national evidence bases.
Each entry links directly to its underlying review articles, allowing users to trace the evidence behind any given action back to its source.
Built on peer-reviewed research
The database draws on a review of reviews led by Dr Kim as part of the LHGP project, presented at the UK Prevention Research conference (full paper currently under review). It reflects the state of evidence at the time of that review and is not intended to be exhaustive, as it will not have captured the very latest primary research or any grey literature. All actions in the resource are linked to published reviews that are hyperlinked, so users are able to see the evidence underpinning a particular action and explore that further.
The database sits alongside a wider set of resources on CDoH, including the Centre for 21st Century Public Health's CDoH Resource Hub at the University of Bath and a broader Addressing CDoH portal.
A practical starting point
For local governments and advocates looking to address the systemic, commercial drivers of health at the community level, the database offers a practical entry point and allows users to move from a broad policy question straight to the specific evidence base behind comparable actions elsewhere, before exploring that evidence in more depth.
The database is available at https://actionsforcdoh.info/lhgp.