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Background The detrimental impact of dominant corporations active in health-harming commodity industries is well recognised. However, to date, existing analyses of the ways in which corporations influence health have paid limited attention to corporate market power. Accordingly, the public health implications of concentrated market structures, the use of anti-competitive market strategies, and the ways in which market power mediates the allocation and distribution of resources via market systems, remain relatively unexplored. To address this gap, this paper aimed to identify and explore key literature that could inform a comprehensive framework to examine corporate market power from a public health perspective. The ultra-processed food (UPF) industry was used to provide illustrative examples. Methods A scoping review of a diverse range of literature, including Industrial Organization, welfare economics, global political economy and antitrust policy, was conducted to identify important concepts and metrics that could be drawn upon within the field of public health to understand and explore market power. The Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) model, a guiding principle of antitrust policy and the regulation of market power, was used as an organising framework. Results We described each of the components of the traditional SCP model and how they have historically been used to assess market power through examining the interrelations between the structure of industries and markets, the conduct of dominant firms, and the overall ability of markets and firms to efficiently allocate and distribute the scarce resources. Conclusion We argue that the SCP model is well-placed to broaden public health research into the ways in which corporations influence health. In addition, the development of a comprehensive framework based on the key findings of this paper could help the public health community to better engage with a set of policy and regulatory tools that have the potential to curb the concentration of corporate power for the betterment of population health.

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A global transition towards diets increasingly dominated by ultra‐processed foods (UPFs) has occurred in recent decades to the detriment of public health and the environment. This study aimed to examine long‐term trends in the structure and market dynamics of the global UPF manufacturing industry as part of broader efforts to understand the drivers of this transition. Using diverse methods, metrics and data sources, we examined several dimensions (e.g., industry concentration and profitability) according to an adapted structure–conduct–performance model. We found that the global UPF manufacturing industry has evolved to become a major component of global food systems, with its longstanding dominant corporations becoming some of the system's largest accumulators of profit and distributors of capital. It follows that reversing the global UPF dietary transition will require structural and regulatory changes to ensure that population diets, and food systems more broadly, are not subordinated to the interests of powerful for‐profit business corporations.

We are a group of researchers and academics with decades of experience in the protection and promotion of public health. We are writing to raise our concerns about how conflicts of interest are reported in public health nutrition research. We highlight examples of why it is important to accurately declare such conflicts, as well as providing examples of situations in which conflicts of interest have been inadequately reported. We call on researchers, and others, to be transparent about conflicts of interest in research. Journal editors in particular have an important responsibility in fully understanding how conflicts of interest can impact on research findings. They need to agree and adopt clear guidelines on conflicts of interest and ensure that authors abide by these to facilitate trust in the scientific process and the credibility of published articles.

We are a group of researchers and academics with decades of experience in the protection and promotion of public health. We are writing to raise our concerns about how conflicts of interest are reported in public health nutrition research. We highlight examples of why it is important to accurately declare such conflicts, as well as providing examples of situations in which conflicts of interest have been inadequately reported. We call on researchers, and others, to be transparent about conflicts of interest in research. Journal editors in particular have an important responsibility in fully understanding how conflicts of interest can impact on research findings and interpretations. They need to agree and adopt clear guidelines on conflicts of interest and ensure that authors abide by these to facilitate trust in the scientific process and the credibility of published articles.

We also acknowledge the comments and reviews by Douglas Arent of NREL and the 21 st Century Power Partnership. The authors, however, are solely responsible for the accuracy and completeness of this study. 38 This example is more fully explored above under What Didn't Work, in Section 2.3.

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