Strategies to Identify and Address Corporate Dominance and Vulnerability of Institutions to Conflicts of Interest
One form of COI that may have a serious effect on health research is when corporate entities can influence how research is conducted. Lacy-Nicols et al (2022) suggest greater public health political activism to counter corporate control. In addition, funding resources to counter business-led initiatives can be created via State levies and taxes on certain products such as tobacco, alcohol and sugar-sweetened products. Furthermore, they suggest that public health practitioners and researchers be protected from corporate threats, that public health institutions share information on corporate strategies to undermine public health initiatives, and develop resources, and exercise strategies to safeguard institutions and researchers from conflicts of interest
What RECs and SGCs should expect from reviewers when they apply
Before, submitting any written reviews or participating in any meeting in which proposals are discussed, reviewers must inform the SGC programme office whether circumstances exist that could be interpreted as a conflict of interest (SGCI, 2020).
COI declarations by reviewers and panel members
Declaration is a strategy to identify COI. Before an actual COI arises, those who have potential conflicts should disclose these.
Reviewers
Anyone asked to provide a review should check to ensure they have no significant conflicts. If they do, they should decline the request, citing “conflict of interest” as their reason. There may be situations where it is obviously inappropriate and they should decline. But there are other situations where it is not so obvious and what they should do is to declare and leave it to the Committee to decide.
Panel
Panel members are reminded to identify any material conflicts of interest, especially with proposals they have been asked to introduce, as early as possible in advance of the meeting. Where a conflict of interest is identified, panel members’ meeting papers will be edited to remove relevant information regarding the conflicted proposal. In addition, the member will be asked to recuse themselves when the proposal is discussed and they will not be permitted to influence the ranking of the proposal.