Interview with Verity Firth: commercial interests and public health policy

Verity Firth; Becky Freeman

doi:10.1071/phrp2931918

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Interview with Verity Firth: commercial interests and public health policy

Verity Firth ^A ^B ^* and Becky Freeman ^C ^D

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Executive Director, Social Justice, UTS, Sydney, NSW, Australia

^B Former Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney, and Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly for the Labor Party (2007–2011), serving in a range of portfolios including science and medical research, and assisting the Health Minister (cancer) and education and training

^C Public Health Research & Practice, Sax Institute, Sydney, NSW, Australia

^D Prevention Research Collaboration, Sydney School of Public Health and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia

^* Correspondence to: Verity.Firth@uts.edu.au

Public Health Research and Practice 29, e2931918 https://doi.org/10.17061/phrp2931918

Published: 25 September 2019

Abstract

Governments seeking to implement public health policy often face intense lobbying from industries vying to protect commercial interests. We spoke to Verity Firth, former Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney and NSW Labor Minister (2007–2011), about her experiences to gain insights into ways in which governments can strike the right balance to deliver better health and social outcomes, and how public health advocates can ensure their voices are heard.

2019 © Firth et al. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence, which allows others to redistribute, adapt and share this work non-commercially provided they attribute the work and any adapted version of it is distributed under the same Creative Commons licence terms.