These include the regulation of food, alcohol, and tobacco products through packaging requirements, age restrictions, and product bans.
However, as such policies are likely to have a significant impact on trade, they must be notified to the Technical Barriers to Trade Committee (TBT) where they may be challenged by representatives from other governments.
This research will investigate the impact of trade on implementing policies set to prevent non-communicable diseases.
The project, awarded £813.6k from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), as part of the NIHR Policy Research Programme, partners with the University of Bristol and the London School of Tropical Medicine.
This study, with Professor Amandine Garde and Dr Gregory Messenger as Co-Leads and Professor Gabriel Siles-Brügge, Marcelo Campbell, and Dr May van Schalkwyk as Co-Investigators, will focus on the evidence that governments have presented at the Committee and how evidence has been treated by other World Trade Organisation members to highlight how the UK Government and others can increase the chances of successfully implementing NCD prevention strategies. The project, entitled ‘Navigation of Trade Challenge at the World Trade Organisation for Public Health Policies', will take place July 2023 – June 2026.
The project team brings collective expertise in the fields of trade law, political economy, health, public policy, the politics of evidence, and food environments, and an established track record in policy-relevant research and capacity building.
This research is a continuation of the extensive academic and policy work that Liverpool’s Law & NCD Unit has undertaken in recent years to understand how the tobacco, alcohol, and food industries have used legal strategies to oppose the effective regulation of their commercial practices, and how these strategies can best be addressed to promote better health for all.
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