Market Driven Epidemics

What are Market Driven Epidemics (MDEs)?

Unhealthy use of consumer products such as tobacco, sugar-laden foods, prescription opioids, ultra-processed foods, and firearms contribute to an estimated one million annual deaths in the U.S. and at least 23 million annual worldwide deaths. Such products contribute to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancers, and drug addiction and cost economies and health systems trillions of dollars.

We define market-driven epidemics (MDEs) as “a significant increase in the consumption of a consumer product whose overuse or misuse has been proven to cause death, disability, and other harmful effects; whose consumption has been accelerated by aggressive marketing;

“whose harmful effects are hidden, denied, or otherwise minimized by producers; and for which effective mitigation is actively resisted by producers”[1].

MDEs represent a distinct dynamic within the broader landscape of commercial determinants of health (CDoH). The distinguishing feature of the MDE methodology is its core focus on the question: “What does it take to significantly and sustainably bend downward the epidemic curves of unhealthy product use and consequent harms?” The MDE methodology is thus an action-oriented public health approach, which builds on prior successful mitigation strategies to quicken epidemic response activities. MDEs are behavioral epidemics that have been found to require a combination of interventions to reduce a product’s unhealthy use by changing the behaviors of producers, their supply chains, and individual consumers.

The Market-driven epidemics approach looks at this dynamic through a 5-phase framework: