Posts Tagged ‘Public trust’

Business involvement in public health is bizarre

The Lancet - 27th November 2010 9:57 am

This week’s editorial in The Lancet…

If you were a UK health secretary faced with soaring rates of obesity, alcohol misuse, and diet-related diseases, what would you do? Were you to take an evidence-based approach, you might consider minimum pricing per unit of alcohol and restrictions on its availability.

You might look at toughening the regulation of how the least healthy foods are marketed to children. You could even demand that manufacturers reformulate their least healthy products to meet minimum nutritional standards.

Or you could, if your name was Andrew Lansley, dismiss all of the above and instead invite representatives of McDonald’s, PepsiCo, and the drinks giant Diageo among others, to submit their policy suggestions on how best to deal with the public-health crises for a forthcoming governmental white paper.

After the initial surprise, it can still take a while for the bizarre reality to sink in - that the companies who have profited the most from the epidemics of obesity and alcohol misuse should now be responsible for setting the agenda on public health simply beggars belief. Whatever sage wisdom the various captains of the food and drink industry have to impart, it will certainly be in the narrow interests of their shareholders, whose continued wealth is contingent on maintaining precisely the status quo that brought about the current public-health crises.

Perhaps their feelings of corporate responsibility will extend to plugging the funding gap left by education secretary Michael Gove’s decision to remove £162 million of funding to English schools for the sports-for-all programme, which tackled low levels of physical activity in children.

The creeping influence of corporate power on public policy is not news to anyone in the UK, but the breathtaking speed and scale by which the coalition government is embracing the agenda of business at the expense of the health of the electorate is an unwelcome novelty. By putting the interests of big business at the heart of public-health policy, Lansley is ensuring that the UK’s big society will not be shedding the pounds any time soon.

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Doctors still the most trusted by the public

By Mike Broad - 30th September 2009 1:37 pm

Doctors remain the public’s most trusted professionals, claims an Ipsos Mori poll.

The annual survey, for the Royal College of Physicians, reveals that 92% of British adults would trust a doctor to tell the truth - the highest for any profession.

Following closely behind the medical profession, trust in teachers and professors remains high and stable at 88% and 80% respectively.

Young men, aged 15 to 34, have the highest levels of trust in doctors.

Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “For doctors to provide the best care they are capable of, both on an individual level and as a profession, it is vital that they earn and keep the trust of patients. Even though the world of medicine is changing rapidly with new developments in technology, drugs and infrastructure, it is heartening to know that the public’s level of trust in doctors has been maintained.

“This gives us a good basis to move forward into the future, where care will be a true partnership between the doctor and patient.”

More than 2,000 adults were asked by Ipsos MORI to say whether they generally trusted 16 different types of people to tell the truth or not.

Sir Robert Worcester, Founder of MORI, said: “MORI began tracking public trust in various occupations 25 years ago, and in all that time, doctors have been the one group trusted by the most people in this country. It is very difficult to do better than that, but over the years, people’s trust in doctors to tell the truth has risen from a low of 82% to these past two year’s 92% - a remarkable achievement.”

At the other end of the scale, government ministers have experienced a decline in trust, from 24% to 16%, and politicians generally have become the least trusted group.

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