Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #121486

Michael Siegel, MD, MPH, Social and Behavioral Sciences Department, Boston University School of Public Health, 715 Albany Street, TW2, Boston, MA 02118, 617-638-5167, mbsiegel@bu.edu

Because the public health infrastructure tends to be organized in terms of fighting specific diseases or addressing specific behaviors, public health groups dedicated to these diseases or behaviors do not generally work together. However, there have been many recent situations in which public health groups have actually been at substantial odds and the work of one group has undermined the efforts of another. This presentation will discuss four distinct examples of conflict between public health organizations or issue/behavior-specific public health movements: (1) fighting between obesity control and tobacco control advocates regarding which issue represents the leading cause of preventable mortality in the nation; (2) attempts of health care advocates and practitioners to obtain funding from cigarette tax revenues supposedly allocated to tobacco prevention and education efforts; (3) acceptance of tobacco industry funding by public health practitioners, largely in the domestic violence and HIV/AIDS fields, to support their work; and (4) the employment by medical and public health organizations of professional lobbyists who simultaneously represented interests in opposition to other public health issues. The presentation will conclude by offering suggestions as to how these types of conflicts can be avoided in the future.

Learning Objectives:

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.