Future healthcare journalPub Date : 2025-06-30eCollection Date: 2025-06-01DOI: 10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100263
Christoffer van Tulleken
{"title":"Ultra-processed foods and public health: Evidence of harm and of conflicts of interest in the food industry to evade regulation.","authors":"Christoffer van Tulleken","doi":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100263","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100263","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The global pandemic of diet-related disease is increasingly recognised as <i>commerciogenic -</i> driven by financial incentives in the food system which drive the marketing and consumption of harmful food, including ultra-processed food (UPF). Despite international consensus on the harms of UPF and the adoption of precautionary policies by organisations such as WHO, UNICEF and governments in Latin America, UK policy response remains compromised by widespread conflicts of interest. These conflicts exist across government agencies, regulatory bodies, academia and media institutions, many of which are directly or indirectly funded by the food industry. Drawing parallels with tobacco control, the paper concludes that eliminating these conflicts is essential to formulating effective public health policy. Without structural change and the exclusion of industry actors from policymaking, rates of diet-related disease will continue to rise.</p>","PeriodicalId":73125,"journal":{"name":"Future healthcare journal","volume":"12 2","pages":"100263"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12277474/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144683656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Future healthcare journalPub Date : 2025-06-30eCollection Date: 2025-06-01DOI: 10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100255
Mark Sullivan
{"title":"Rethinking pharmaceutical development: A not-for-profit model to address global health inequities.","authors":"Mark Sullivan","doi":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100255","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100255","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Modern pharmaceuticals represent some of the greatest achievements in science and economic development. Yet, despite significant progress, profound inequities in access to essential medicines persist, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Traditional market-driven pharmaceutical models have succeeded where strong commercial incentives exist, but have failed to deliver for diseases with limited market potential, particularly in the neglected tropical diseases. This article outlines the reasons for inequity within the current system, the role of not-for-profit pharmaceutical development, and the urgent need for a new, complementary model for access that centres on public health priorities rather than market return.</p>","PeriodicalId":73125,"journal":{"name":"Future healthcare journal","volume":"12 2","pages":"100255"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12277471/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144683650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Future healthcare journalPub Date : 2025-06-30eCollection Date: 2025-06-01DOI: 10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100257
Margaret McCartney
{"title":"The NHS and the pharmaceutical industry: High risk of harmful interactions.","authors":"Margaret McCartney","doi":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100257","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100257","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The pharmaceutical industry has been responsible for many interventions of great benefit to patients. However, great harm to patients and healthcare systems have been created through conflicts of interest, when the behaviours of individual doctors and healthcare systems have been compromised and patient harm has resulted. The interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS cannot be assumed to overlap. This means that medical decision making should be as independent and unbiased as possible. Transparency about conflicts is important, but should be a means to the end it must be part of a system which stops conflicts harming patients and healthcare systems. Given the uncertainty of how the benefits of transparency can be used in practice, it is an imperative that conflicts are avoided, and not just 'managed'.</p>","PeriodicalId":73125,"journal":{"name":"Future healthcare journal","volume":"12 2","pages":"100257"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12277477/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144683653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Future healthcare journalPub Date : 2025-06-30eCollection Date: 2025-06-01DOI: 10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100269
Alice Wiseman
{"title":"Countering industry promotion of harmful products to protect public health.","authors":"Alice Wiseman","doi":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100269","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100269","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), caused by the consumption and use of unhealthy products, cannot be attributed to individual behaviours alone. The way that our world has changed in recent decades shows that the problem needs to be addressed through changes in policy rather than focusing solely on behaviour change. The efforts to reduce the harm caused by smoking over the past 50 years have given us a blueprint for how to reduce the harm caused by the tactics used by big industry to promote and sell harmful products. These commercial determinants of health (CDOH) can be countered by pre-exisitng powers at the local level, but we need national policy changes to help counter these CDOH more effectively.</p>","PeriodicalId":73125,"journal":{"name":"Future healthcare journal","volume":"12 2","pages":"100269"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12277473/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144683646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Future healthcare journalPub Date : 2025-06-30eCollection Date: 2025-06-01DOI: 10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100265
Tony Waterston, Adriano Cattaneo, Nicole Bando, Jamie Errico, Robert Boyle, Sarah Brennan, Lori Lake, Melissa Mialon, Laurence Grummer-Strawn
{"title":"The urgent need to end sponsorship of healthcare professional associations by the commercial milk formula industry.","authors":"Tony Waterston, Adriano Cattaneo, Nicole Bando, Jamie Errico, Robert Boyle, Sarah Brennan, Lori Lake, Melissa Mialon, Laurence Grummer-Strawn","doi":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100265","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100265","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sponsorship of healthcare professional associations (HCPAs) by the commercial milk formula (CMF) industry violates the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. The financial ties and conflicts of interests brought about by such sponsorship distort education, research and practices in ways which undermine breastfeeding and compromise maternal and child health. The Health Advocates for Sponsorship-Free Feeding (HASFF) working group, convened by the World Health Organization, aims to address these challenges and has developed a range of tools and resources to support and encourage other HCPAs to end sponsorship from the CMF industry.</p>","PeriodicalId":73125,"journal":{"name":"Future healthcare journal","volume":"12 2","pages":"100265"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12277465/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144683655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Future healthcare journalPub Date : 2025-06-30eCollection Date: 2025-06-01DOI: 10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100264
Bartosz Helfer, Katarzyna Henke-Ciążyńska, Robert J Boyle
{"title":"Commercial influences on infant and young child feeding.","authors":"Bartosz Helfer, Katarzyna Henke-Ciążyńska, Robert J Boyle","doi":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100264","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100264","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Optimal infant and young child feeding is essential for child health, development and social wellbeing. Breastfeeding is the foundation of early nutrition, and powerfully protects infants and young children against both infectious and non-communicable diseases. The commercial milk formula industry systematically undermines breastfeeding through pervasive marketing and influence over science, education and policy, despite international guidance, including the World Health Organization (WHO) International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. Biased industry-sponsored research supports misleading claims about formula efficacy, while industry funding of nutrition regulators, professional education and healthcare practitioners creates conflicts of interest. To protect public health, stronger regulations, full implementation of the WHO Code and clear boundaries between the formula industry and health sectors are needed. We propose policy actions, including a binding global treaty and transparency measures, to counteract commercial influence and safeguard child health.</p>","PeriodicalId":73125,"journal":{"name":"Future healthcare journal","volume":"12 2","pages":"100264"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12277476/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144683645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Future healthcare journalPub Date : 2025-06-30eCollection Date: 2025-06-01DOI: 10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100268
Anna B Gilmore, Rachel A Barry, Alice Fabbri
{"title":"Why addressing conflicts of interest is essential to progress in reducing commercially driven health harms: Lessons from tobacco.","authors":"Anna B Gilmore, Rachel A Barry, Alice Fabbri","doi":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100268","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100268","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Globally and in the UK, significant progress has been made in tackling the harms of tobacco use. This was enabled by addressing the fundamental conflict between the tobacco industry's interests and those of the public, including by rejecting partnerships with the tobacco industry. Conflicts of interest (COIs), like those identified in tobacco control, exist in other areas of public health, yet governments, including the UK, continue to work in partnership with other health-harming industries, including alcohol, ultra-processed food and gambling, despite evidence that partnership approaches where COIs exist are ineffective. This article details lessons that can be drawn from this experience, outlining how understanding and addressing COIs in policy, professional practice and science are prerequisites to tackling commercially driven harms.</p>","PeriodicalId":73125,"journal":{"name":"Future healthcare journal","volume":"12 2","pages":"100268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12277478/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144683701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Future healthcare journalPub Date : 2025-06-30eCollection Date: 2025-06-01DOI: 10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100273
Lord James Nicholas Bethell
{"title":"The soft power forcefield that protects the junk food industry.","authors":"Lord James Nicholas Bethell","doi":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100273","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100273","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>It's time that doctors stepped up to their responsibility to call out the junk food industry. They proved highly effective at campaigning for a pay rise. It's time that they got angry about the damage being done by the food and drinks industry to the children of Britain.</p>","PeriodicalId":73125,"journal":{"name":"Future healthcare journal","volume":"12 2","pages":"100273"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12277466/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144683654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Future healthcare journalPub Date : 2025-04-30eCollection Date: 2025-06-01DOI: 10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100252
Andrea Cuschieri, Bridget L Ryan, Sarah Cuschieri
{"title":"Integrating multimorbidity education into undergraduate medical curriculum: A systematic review.","authors":"Andrea Cuschieri, Bridget L Ryan, Sarah Cuschieri","doi":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100252","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100252","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Multimorbidity is becoming highly prevalent across the globe. Current medical curricula predominantly focus on single-disease management, leaving future physicians underprepared to provide patient-centred care to address the multimorbidity epidemic. Through a systematic review, this short communication identified the current state of multimorbidity education in medical curricula and evaluated existing educational approaches. A narrative systematic review (CRD42024585500) of studies meeting stringent inclusion criteria focusing on multimorbidity education was conducted. The review found limited evidence regarding the integration and effectiveness of current educational approaches. Although multimorbidity education was associated with improved self-reported student confidence, there was a notable absence of structured, formal teaching frameworks, with education primarily occurring through informal clinical exposure. This systematic review discovered the absence of an evidence base on structured, validated teaching methods that are urgently needed to better prepare future physicians to manage patients with multimorbidity effectively.</p>","PeriodicalId":73125,"journal":{"name":"Future healthcare journal","volume":"12 2","pages":"100252"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12149426/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144268034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}