Big food, big soda, big alcohol, big gambling, big tobacco, big formula, big coal and big oil - all of these industries contribute to the global burden of NCDs and have been responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in a variety of interesting and illuminating ways. 

The NCD Alliance and SPECTRUM research consortium have been crowd-sourcing examples of unhealthy commodity industries’ activities since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, with a view to map, analyse and expose practices which could ultimately exacerbate not only the burden of NCDs but worsen the coronavirus pandemic’s severity as well.

Over 200 crowdsourced submissions have been received from every continent to date with the NCD community sharing examples of new and adapted activities in response to the pandemic. These industries’ responses include novel partnership and corporate social responsibility initiatives, adapted marketing campaigns, pivoted portfolios, and engagement with governments and media to influence policy and regulations.

Today we share a snapshot of mapped examples, which will be updated with additional examples each week to provide a more complete picture of the strategies and tactics being employed by certain industries leveraging the pandemic in ways which may actually make health worse during this global health crisis.

We invite you to continue gathering examples by keeping an eye out for industry actions, activities, communications and behaviours that strike you as interesting, curious and/or concerning, and when you see them, visit: bit.ly/NCDA_SPECTRUM_MAPPING_TOOL

Explore the map of current findings here or click the map below! 

Stay tuned, share your examples and follow #ActOnNCDs on social media for updates.