Assessing the health impacts of transnational corporations
A recent report in Croakey, an online independent in-depth social journalism platform for health, recently featured research from the Public Health Medicine Division in collaboration with colleagues in Australia. The report describes recommendations from a Corporate Health Impact Assessment (CHIA) undertaken by a team of public health experts of the transnational corporation (TNC) Rio Tinto and includes mandating environment controls, endorsing human rights treaties, ensuring all taxes are paid and restricting government lobbying. This assessment revealed some of the serious and long-term health impacts that a TNC can have on nations and communities through mechanism such as increased pollution and habitat destruction, tax avoidance and human rights abuses. Because TNCs have the ability to operate partly outside of national boundaries, they can often avoid the regulatory structures imposed by individual jurisdictions.