Commercial and Economic Determinants of Health Research Translation Centre

The Commercial and Economic Determinants of Health Research Translation Centre is a new 5-year collaboration between Deakin and VicHealth.

The Centre aims to better understand how businesses, industries and market systems impact health, and explore practical solutions towards healthier, fairer and thriving communities. With an explicit focus on research translation for public health impact, the Centre hopes to drive change in policy systems and incentivise business models that can better support population health and equity.

We aim to do this by:

• Generating targeted research, knowledge translation and dissemination to understand and reshape commercial and economic determinants of health
• Transdisciplinary collaboration and engagement with a wide range of interest holders across research, the public sector, non-government organisations, community groups and the business community.

The Centre seeks to be a platform to grow and sustain policy-relevant research activities that create meaningful societal change locally and globally.

Our work program is currently under development. Commencing in July 2025, the first year of operations will focus on building relationships and collaboratively shaping the research and research translation agenda. Forums and workshops will offer multiple opportunities for researchers, governments and community groups to contribute to this process.

This development work is organised across four thematic knowledge streams:

1. Monitoring and accountability: Examining corporate practices, including political influence, marketing and power consolidation, to strengthen mechanisms for making businesses accountable for their impact on health.
2. Policy and regulatory change: Exploring legislative, regulatory and policy levers that can drive practices that prioritise health and wellbeing.
3. Investing for health and wellbeing: Identifying ways to incentivise investments that promote health, equity and sustainability, including support for social enterprises.
4. Indigenous health: Investigating how business practices affect the health of Indigenous communities and identifying solutions to strengthen health equity.

Cutting across the work program, we also have knowledge streams focused on:

• Community engagement: Supporting extensive engagement with researchers, policy makers, community groups and businesses to ensure our work program reflects the needs and experiences of diverse interest-holders
• Workforce development: Building the skills of researchers, practitioners and policy makers in Australia and internationally, including in low- and middle-income countries, through formal and informal training on the commercial and economic determinants of health

Our transdisciplinary team includes researchers and practitioners specialising in public health, First Nations health, business, economics, law and health policy, as well as co-design, community engagement and research translation.

Our core team includes:

• Professor Gary Sacks is the Centre Director. He is a professor of public health policy in Deakin's School of Health and Social Development and Co-Director of the Deakin Centre for Global Preventive Health and Nutrition. His research focuses on the commercial and economic determinants of health, with a focus on food policy.
• Professor Kathryn Backholer is a professor of public health policy and Co-Director of the Institute for Health Transformation. Her research focuses on the intersections of equity and the commercial determinants of health, including harmful marketing and corporate political activities.
• Associate Professor Neera Bhatia is the Director of the Law, Health and Society research unit. Her research critically evaluates health law, policy, regulation, ethics and to improve wellbeing and health outcomes throughout society, including examining the impacts of health, law and healthcare outcomes.
• Associate Professor Jennifer Browne is a senior research fellow at Deakin Centre for Global Preventive Health and Nutrition and the Institute for Health Transformation. She co-leads an existing program of work on the commercial determinants of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health as part of the Murnong Health Research Mob.
• Jasmine Chan is the Centre's program manager and a research fellow at Deakin Centre for Global Preventive Health and Nutrition. Her research explores policies to advance population health, with a focus on corporate accountability and benchmarking initiatives to improve the healthiness of food environments.
• Alison Coughlan is the manager of Health Voices Victoria in the Institute for Health Transformation and a recognised leader in consumer and community engagement in health.
• Dr Kate Lycett is a Senior Research Fellow with a background in psychology and epidemiology. Her research and advocacy centres on creating an economy that works for the people and the planet, and works extensively with government and non-government organisations to advocate for new economic and legislative models to address health and wealth inequities.
• Dr Florentine Martino is a research fellow at the Deakin Centre for Global Preventive Health and Nutrition with extensive experience researching health harms driven by industry practices, including marketing, lobbying, political donations and corporate political activity.
• Deakin Distinguished Professor Yin Paradies is a leading Aboriginal researcher and Chair in Race Relations at Deakin University. He has with extensive experience and expertise in Indigenous health, including collaborations with Indigenous organisations, communities and peak bodies.
• Dr Hannah Pitt is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. She is an experienced qualitative public health researcher exploring the impact of the commercial and political determinants of health on children and young people, relating to the impact of marketing from harmful industries.
• Professor Samantha Thomas is a professor of public health in the Institute for Health Transformation. Her research focuses on the social, commercial and political determinants of health with particular focus on mechanisms of influence on policy decision making and the impact of harmful industries on the health and equity of women and children.
• Dr Benjamin Wood is a research fellow at the Deakin Centre for Global Preventive Health and Nutrition. His research focuses on the political economy of food systems, as well as understanding and addressing the ways in which large corporate and financial actors adversely influence health and equity.