The role of commercial influences in public understanding of harms, causes, and solutions

Commercial efforts to influence the framing of problems and solutions in the mind of the public are both powerful and yet understudied. Often in health, researchers and policymakers seek to influence the public conversation in ways that lead to a greater understanding of health harms and their causes. “Lay epidemiology” is a term used to describe the processes through which health risks are understood and interpreted by the average person, and it is viewed as a barrier to public health when the public disbelieves or fails to act on public health messages. However, as with influence on policy, efforts to influence the public conversation do not exist in isolation but, rather, occur in an environment with at times competing messages, including disinformation, by vested interests. Developing the tools to better conceptualize, quantify, and ultimately predict the effects of commercial actors on public understanding and discourse is therefore of paramount importance.