Commentary on Public Health Advocacy to Change Corporate Practices

Responsible practitioners who plan programs to promote health and prevent diseases must understand and address those factors and conditions that influence the health status of the population they serve. It is clear that some corporations and businesses promote and sell products and pursue other policies that can have deleterious effects on the public's health. This commentary urges planners and practitioners who seek to redress the actions and polices that lead to corporate disease promotion to consider expanding their working knowledge of (a) the core values that drive corporate culture and (b) how those values are often framed to distort and override the social justice values of public health. Such understanding can serve to strengthen public health professionals' capacity to take discrete steps, including the strategic use of community organizing for power, to heighten public demand for greater corporate social accountability for the health consequences of their actions.