Attitudes and practices of public health academics towards research funding from for-profit organizations: cross-section
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Attitudes and practices of public health academics towards research funding from for-profit organizations: cross-sectional survey Rima Nakkash1 • Ahmed Ali1 • Hala Alaouie1 • Khalil Asmar1 • Norbert Hirschhorn2 • Sanaa Mugharbil1 Iman Nuwayhid1 • Leslie London3 • Amina Saban3 • Sabina Faiz Rashid4 • Md Koushik Ahmed4 • Cecile Knai5 • Charlotte Bigland6 • Rima A. Afifi7
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Received: 31 January 2020 / Revised: 16 June 2020 / Accepted: 22 June 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Objectives The growing trend of for-profit organization (FPO)-funded university research is concerning because resultant potential conflicts of interest might lead to biases in methods, results, and interpretation. For public health academic programmes, receiving funds from FPOs whose products have negative health implications may be particularly problematic. Methods A cross-sectional survey assessed attitudes and practices of public health academics towards accepting funding from FPOs. The sampling frame included universities in five world regions offering a graduate degree in public health; 166 academics responded. Descriptive, bivariate, and logistic regression analyses were conducted. Results Over half of respondents were in favour of accepting funding from FPOs; attitudes differed by world region and gender but not by rank, contract status, % salary offset required, primary identity, or exposure to an ethics course. In the last 5 years, almost 20% of respondents had received funding from a FPO. Sixty per cent of respondents agreed that there was potential for bias in seven aspects of the research process, when funds were from FPOs. Conclusions Globally, public health academics should increase dialogue around the potential harms of research and practice funded by FPOs. Keywords For-profit corporation Public health Funding Conflict of interest Commercial determinants of health Unhealthy commodity industries
Introduction For-profit organization (FPO)-sponsored academic education, research, and practice have increased recently in parallel with dwindling alternative sources of funding, or because they are perceived to permit more innovation and translation (Nestle 2016; Fabbri et al. 2018). We use the term FPO to mean any national or international organization that sells consumer products related to food and
This article is part of the special issue ‘Market-driven forces and Public Health’.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01416-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
beverages, tobacco, alcohol, and other organizations like pharmaceutical, gambling, arms dealing or manufacturing, health insurance companies, and the petroleum industry. The collaboration between research, science, academics, and FPOs has recently been a widely debated topic globally (Readon 2018; Marks 2019; Marten and Hawkins 2018; Dyer 2020). The growing trend of FPO-funded university research
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