麻豆社

This paper explains how major tobacco companies are increasingly targeting dental professionals and organisations as part of efforts to gain legitimacy within the healthcare sector. It highlights tactics such as sponsoring dental education, funding research, and promoting newer 鈥渞educed鈥慼arm鈥� nicotine products, all of which may create conflicts of interest and blur the line between public health and industry influence. The authors warn that this involvement risks undermining established tobacco control efforts and could normalise partnerships with an industry whose products are harmful to oral and general health.

The report highlights that climate change is already a serious and escalating public health crisis, particularly in Europe, which is warming twice as fast as the global average. It highlights how rising temperatures, extreme weather events, air pollution, and environmental changes are increasing deaths, straining health systems, and widening social and economic inequalities. The report stresses that the costs of inaction are already significant and will continue to grow, but also emphasises that climate action presents major opportunities to improve health and build more resilient societies. It calls for urgent, coordinated action from governments and international bodies to place health at the centre of climate policy, including reducing fossil fuel use, strengthening climate-resilient health systems, and treating climate change as a public health emergency.

This 2026 Lancet Commission on liver health in Europe evaluates progress since its 2021 report and finds that liver disease remains a major and growing public health challenge driven largely by preventable risk factors. It shows that cirrhosis and liver cancer together cause about 780 deaths per day in Europe (鈮�3% of all deaths), with liver cancer mortality rising by more than 50% since 2000, while cirrhosis mortality remains persistently high. The Commission highlights that the burden is closely linked to lifestyle, social inequalities, and commercial determinants (e.g., alcohol and unhealthy diet), and that current policy implementation has been insufficient despite clear evidence on prevention. It concludes that stronger, coordinated policy action could substantially reduce disease burden (potentially nearly halving it), improve life expectancy, and deliver large economic benefits, emphasising prevention, cross-sector policy change, and better implementation of existing recommendations.

The paper examines how conflicts of interest (COIs) in public health research are often inadequately addressed through disclosure alone and describes the development of a more robust COI policy for a large, multi鈥慽nstitutional research consortium. Using a reflective case study approach, the authors document the practical steps, challenges, and considerations involved in creating and implementing this policy within a project focused on the commercial determinants of health. The paper offers actionable guidance to strengthen research governance and better safeguard the integrity of collaborative public health research

This Commission identifies that three interconnected global threats, non-communicable diseases, infectious disease outbreaks, and environmental degradation, continue to worsen despite international commitments. These threats share underlying drivers rooted in political and economic systems that prioritise growth over health and sustainability, disproportionately harming people in low-income settings. To address this, authors examined the physical environment and transport, agriculture and food, and energy systems, developing ten objectives and evidence鈥慴ased recommendations through reviews, expert input, and economic modelling. Their findings highlight how intertwined factors, such as land clearing for palm oil, unhealthy diets, ecosystem destruction, and climate change, simultaneously fuel disease and environmental crises. The Commission emphasises that meaningful progress requires transforming the environments that shape population behaviour, rather than relying on individual choice, and calls for governments and businesses to take systemic action. Their priority recommendations focus on replacing harmful policies, strengthening institutions and civil society, and building capacity for integrated responses, with measurable progress needed by 2030.

Climate change is weakening the political, economic, social, and technological systems needed for effective health governance, forcing governments to divert resources toward emergency responses and creating vulnerabilities that commercial actors can exploit. Dan Hunt and Dr Britta Matthes highlight that this destabilisation enables corporate influence over health policy, particularly as climate driven economic insecurity affects GDP, employment, and supply chains. The paper reveals how some commercial actors take advantage of these conditions鈥攆or example through casualised labour or raising prices for essential medicines during crises鈥攁nd notes that over 70% of post industrial CO鈧� emissions originate from just 78 corporate and state entities. It also emphasises the longstanding denial and delay strategies used by fossil fuel, plastics, and agrichemical industries to obstruct climate policy.