Fifty shades of partnerships: a governance typology for public private engagement in the nutrition sector

Abstract

Background Multistakeholder collaboration has emerged as a dominant approach for engaging and mobilising non-state actors; notably embedded in the paradigm of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Yet, considerable ambiguity and contestation surrounds the appropriate terms of public private engagement (PPE) with industry actors. Main body This paper seeks to conceptualise different forms of engagement with the food industry in tackling diet-related noncommunicable disease, within the context of power asymmetries across engaged stakeholders. It does so by introducing the Governance Typology for Public Private Engagement in the Nutrition Sector, a typology for government-led engagement with food industry actors across three domains: (i) the form of industry and civil society actor engagement (i.e., rules of exercising institutional power), based on the degree of participation in formal decision-making as well as participation at different stages in the policy cycle; (ii) the type of industry actors being engaged (i.e., pre-existing power attributes), based on function, size, and product portfolios for profit; and (iii) the substantive policy focus of engagement. Conclusions The Governance Typology for Public Private Engagement in the Nutrition Sector seeks to inform national level nutrition policy makers on good engagement practice with food industry actors and complements existing risk assessment tools. This typology has the potential to inform decision-making on public sector engagement with other industries that profit from products detrimental to human and planetary health.

Public-Private Partnerships in Mexico: Implications of Engaging With the Food and Beverage Industry for Public Health Nutrition

“… 25 , 57 - 59 Also, typologies of PPPs have been suggested to try to improve accountability and transparency of their goverenace. 60 …”

“…PPPs are permanent in many settings but take more complex forms with F&BI participation through the third parties that they fund. 60 However, the links with the industry are not made clear despite, in many cases, having a transparency platform that citizens can use, particularly in low-resource countries, making it more difficult for policy-makers and participants to perceive them as originating or being developed in collaboration with commercial actors. PPPs are endemic, and, in some instances, they might still be a good way of financing public health initiatives.…”

Rebalancing commercial and public interests in prioritizing biomedical, social and environmental aspects of health through defining and managing conflicts of interest

“…Again, more specifically, conflict of interest can be decreased at the start of a “partnership” relationship, by: giving the powerful industry lower degrees of participation, limiting its role to consultation or to simply providing information, not involving them in education and awareness, and involving them only in implementation rather than in policy formation ( 71 ). It is important to note that at an international level, WHO policy is now predicated on the concept of a fundamental COI between the tobacco industry and public health.…”

Is "small quantity lipid nutrition supplement" (SQ-LNS) a sustainable and pragmatic strategy to prevent malnutrition?

“…31 This proposal seems to us to be the result of pressure to form public private partnerships with food and agricultural companies -many of whom profit from products and processes that are detrimental to human and planetary health. 32 We note that the policy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major donor for the work on SQ-LNS, is to promote PPPs, especially in low-income countries. 33 IBFAN has produced many reports and analyses of how this approach benefits the for-profit sector, increases its influence of global agendas, and creates rather than reduces risks to human rights.…”