The global diabetes epidemic and the nonprofit state corporate complex: Equity implications of discourses, research agendas, and policy recommendations of diabetes nonprofit organizations

Abstract

Important insights have been gained from studying how corporate social actors -- such as Big Tobacco or Big Food -- influence how global health issues are framed, debated, and addressed, and in so doing contribute to reproducing health inequities. Less attention has been paid to the role of nonprofit organizations (NPOs), even when all too often NPOs actively contribute to these inequities through normalizing discourses and practices that legitimize establishment views, poor public policies and existing relations of power. Our study attempts to fill this gap by assessing the influence on global health inequities of major NPOs -- specifically three disease associations -- whose mission includes preventing type 2 diabetes (henceforth diabetes) or reducing inequities in the global diabetes epidemic.No longer considered a “disease of prosperity”, diabetes is known to affect the poor and racialized minorities disproportionately, in countries at all levels of income. While the contribution of the social and political determinants of health is well established, major NPOs ostensibly committed to eradicate, or at least moderate the effects of, diabetes give short shrift to these determinants, framing them at best as the context that promotes behaviours that combine with genetic predispositions to drive the inequitable, global distribution of diabetes.Drawing from Marxian theory and critical discourse analysis, we assess publicly available information – on educational and policy prescriptions, funding sources, corporate affiliations, funded research and social media presence -- pertaining to one Canadian, one US and one international NPO to identify discourses and practices that may contribute to the global, unequal distribution of diabetes and elaborate on their implications for health equity more broadly.