This small study, supported by SPECTRUM and led by the Smokefree Action Coalition, Obesity Health Alliance and Alcohol Health Alliance, explores the scope for government, public health professionals and health advocates to take a more integrated approach to tackling the main risk factors for NCDs. In practice, this can take various forms ranging from greater coordination between partners, through coherence to full integration of campaigning or policy-making. As smoking, drinking and the consumption of unhealthy food and drink all have powerful commercial determinants, there is a case for tackling these determinants in a more joined-up way. It has been argued that the commercial determinants of health are addressed most effectively not through siloed efforts to reduce consumption of health-harming products, but instead as a set of integrated strategies to reduce exposures to health-harming commercial actors and activities.

Fourteen individuals with senior roles in public health were selected for interview through the networks of the Smokefree Action Coalition, Obesity Health Alliance and Alcohol Health Alliance. They were asked to participate either because they had experience and knowledge of tackling the commercial determinants of health or because they had a strategic view of the opportunities for doing so.