World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Social, Political and Commercial Determinants of Health Equity

In 2020, the Southgate Institute was designated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre to support international research and knowledge translation on social, political, and commercial determinants of health equity. Prof Fran Baum is designated as the Director of the Centre.

The WHO Collaborating Centre will have four main activity areas:

This activity will support WHO in seeking to strengthen the capacity of countries’ health sectors to engage other sectors in policy making and to use policy levers to support an intersectoral approach to addressing the social determinants.

It will specifically support WHO in the implementation of Health in All Policies across WHO regions by providing an evidence base of evaluation methods and evidence that can be incorporated into WHO’s Health in All Policies training materials.

Lead

Dr Helen Van Eyk

WHO Member States need policy products that provide clear lines for action, with compelling narratives to make sense of the complexity of policy coherence in the era of the Sustainable Development Agenda. This requires scientists to draw together a complex web of evidence from multiple disciplines and analyses on the determinants of health. The Southgate Institute will contribute to developing this evidence, with a focus on:

• non-communicable diseases
• urban planning (including housing)
• digital technologies
• the nexus of primary health care with these social determinants of health, as current areas of high global public health interest.
  

They will be taken as three examples to apply a common framework, drawing together the chief pathways associated with the production of health inequities.

Lead

Professor Fran Baum

The Southgate Institute will conduct research into how policy action in low, middle and high income countries in a wide range of sectors that deal with social determinants of health contributes to a country’s capacity to ‘punch above its weight’ to produce better than expected life expectancy outcomes relative to national income.

View more information about the Punching Above Weight research program and network

Lead

Dr Toby Freeman

Transnational corporations play a large role impacting several determinants of health as a result of their economic and commercial interests. The Southgate Institute has a program of research developing methods to evaluate the health impacts of transnational corporations. This research will aim to assist in WHO Member States’ understanding of what kind of policies can be advocated for to mitigate any harmful impacts and to promote positive impacts of transnational corporations for public health and health equity.

Lead

Dr Julia Anaf

Professor Fran Baum

Dr Matt Fisher