Health Inc Seminar Series 3.3

Featuring Dr. Mélissa Mialon

January 25, 2024 | 12 PM – 1 PM EST | Virtual Seminar via Zoom

* **This seminar will take place online, and a link will be e-mailed the morning of the event***

The Health Inc: Corporations, Capitalism, and the commercial determinants of health seminar series is co-hosted by the Centre for Global Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

ABSTRACT

With a ‘boom’ in the global milk formula market, researchers, public health professionals, and policymakers have raised serious concerns about the impacts for breastfeeding, and child and maternal health. Despite this scrutiny of the global milk formula industry, there has been less investigation of the global expansion of the baby food industry, nor the activities and strategies of the corporations that seek to grow and sustain these markets. market and political practices corporations have used to grow and sustain their markets. In this seminar presentation, Dr Mialon will explore the various practices through which the baby food industry influences infant and young child feeding. These practices include medical marketing, manufacturing public support, and shaping evidence, for example. Dr Mialon will discuss some of the key risks associated with engaging with the baby food industry for researchers and health professionals.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Baker, P., Russ, K., Kang, M. et al. Globalization, first-foods systems transformations and corporate power: a synthesis of literature and data on the market and political practices of the transnational baby food industry.Global Health 17, 58 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00708-1

Cossez, E., Baker, P., & Mialon, M. (2022). ‘The second mother’: How the baby food industry captures science, health professions and civil society in France. Maternal & Child Nutrition, 18, e13301. https://doi.org/10.1111/mcn.13301