When evidence isn’t enough: Ideological, institutional, and interest-based constraints on achieving trade and health policy coherence

Trade and investment policy has the capacity to support or undermine global action on rising noncommunicable disease (NCD) rates. This article will employ a political science approach to explore how ideology, institutions and interests within the trade and investment policy space may constrain policy recommendations made in the World Health Organization’s Global Action Plan (GAP) on NCDs. Specifically, it details how neoliberal ideology may constrain public health values, how the new constitutionalism may constrain public health legitimacy and how disparities in money, power and resources between elite economic actors and public policy actors may constrain the capacity of public health to influence trade and investment agreement negotiations. The implications of these constraints on the implementation of the GAP-NCDs are discussed.