Dalla Lana School of Public Health

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Presented by the Centre for Global Health, Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Governance, Accountability, and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector …

Health Inc Seminar Series: Season 5, Episode 3

Title: Mapping industry influence: Network methods for analyzing corporate power in global health systems

Speaker: Dr. Andrea Bowra

Abstract: Corporations work through networks of actors to circulate narratives that serve their interests, shaping how products are understood, regulated, and used. Studying these networks provides a powerful way to identify how corporate narratives gain legitimacy and move across scientific, policy, and public domains. Actor-network theory and visual network analysis offer useful tools for tracing these processes and making visible the relationships through which influence is exerted. As an example, this study examines Purdue Pharmaceutical’s 1996 launch of OxyContin, backed at the time by the largest marketing plan in pharmaceutical history. Drawing on document analysis and key informant interviews, I trace how Purdue advanced narratives of opioid safety and necessity, and embedded these framings through relationships with public relations firms, medical professionals, and academic institutions. These networks extended across borders, shaping media coverage, scholarship, and health practices in ways that increased opioid acceptability and delayed regulatory responses to opioid-related harms. This research demonstrates how corporations are able to mobilize transnational networks to promote products, deflect accountability, and influence health policy, with consequences that reverberate through global health systems.