The opening plenary will frame the commercial determinants of health as a unifying analytical lens for understanding contemporary global health challenges. It will synthesize insights from political economy, public health, and governance to examine how commercial actors influence population health through markets, policy processes, knowledge production, and the distribution of risks and resources.

The session will emphasize that commercial determinants operate across sectors—including food systems, the arms industry, digital technologies such as AI and social media, and the finance, energy, and security industries. We will also give special attention to health-related commercial actors operating across health systems, including providers, insurers, hospitals, device manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies. In light of this diversity, the session will include a landscape view to highlight both cross-cutting patterns and sector-specific dynamics. It will also foreground the experiences of communities and populations most directly affected by commercial determinants, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, to ensure that the discussion remains grounded in lived realities as well as conceptual analysis.

The plenary will examine how commercial power is exercised, how inequities are produced and maintained, and what mechanisms can align private incentives with public health goals. Governance, accountability, transparency, and regulation are among the principal approaches available to governments, although no comprehensive or broadly effective framework has yet been adopted. We will also explore the role of disinformation and strategic communication in shaping policy and public understanding, especially in relation to AI and social media.

By bringing together diverse perspectives, the session will identify tensions, trade-offs, and opportunities for reform. It will provide a conceptual foundation for subsequent discussions while also highlighting pathways through which communities, governments, and other actors can shape more equitable and health-promoting commercial systems.