Spring 2026 Environmental Health Committee Webinar Series 

Title: Corporate Determinants of Health: UCSF Archives of Internal Corporate Documents
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026
Time: 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM (PST)
Location: Zoom
Speakers:
Tracey Woodruff , PhD, MPH
Nicholas Chartres, MD

Kate Tasker, Director of the UCSF Industry Documents Library (Video)

Health-harming products and chemicals are  a significant contributor to the global rise in chronic disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2016 estimated that 24% of global deaths are due to modifiable environmental risks.  Non-communicable diseases surpassed communicable diseases beginning in the 1990’s due to sanitation and other public health measures. Chronic diseases, however, continue to rise globally with the introduction of other environmental factors. Studies estimate that fossil fuels, chemicals, alcohol, tobacco and ultra-processed foods are now responsible for approximately one in three deaths worldwide.

The WHO report notes that chronic diseases linked to these products are on the rise, including increases in diabetes, Parkinson’s, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Scientists call it an “industrial epidemic” of disease.  But what about industry and their influence on the science and agencies that regulate them? Industry influence is well established but until recently we did not have access to documents that revealed what and when industry knew about health or environmental harms.

The UCSF Center for Corporate Harm houses these documents noting that, “Industries that produce health-harming products, including fossil fuels, plastics, petrochemicals, tobacco, and ultra-processed foods, have waged a decades-long assault on government regulatory agencies and policymaking to rig rules in their favor at the expense of public health. At the same time, these health harming products have contributed to a rise in chronic disease. We are working to change that.” The Center to End Corporate Harm is doing that by researching industry tactics that undermine science, regulations and health, exposing industry conflicts of interest, and prioritizing health.

The Industry Documents Library at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) is a key part of the Center by housing a digital archive of internal documents from corporations across industries that produce these health-harming products. Originally established in 2002 to house documents publicly disclosed in litigation against the tobacco industry in the 1990s, analysis using these documents has generated more than 1,000 peer-reviewed studies, reports and news stories, with their findings revealing firsthand accounts of what the industry knew about the health harms of tobacco but did not reveal. The library now houses over 20 million documents including internal documents from the pharmaceutical, chemical, food, and fossil fuel industries. These documents are fully searchable and accessible to the public as part of the Center to End Corporate Harm.  There are individual and societal costs to chronic diseases as well as financial costs. In 2016 the U.S. the cost of chronic disease was estimated at 3.7 trillion, including loss of productivity and comprised 20% of the GDP.

Join Director Tracey Woodruff, PhD, MPH, and lead scientific advisor Nicholas Chartres, MD, as they discuss these industry files giving examples of the mechanisms and strategies these corporations use to proliferate the sale of their products, including published case studies. They examine the concepts of “commercial determinants” and “corporate determinants” of health, their influence on public health policy and how this has contributed to the rise in chronic disease. 

Biographies

Tracey Woodruff, PhD, MPH 

Tracey Woodruff, PhD, MPH, is a national expert on chemical and regulatory policy.  Dr. Woodruff is now a Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.  She is the former Director of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Center to End Corporate Harm and also former Director of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE) & UCSF Environmental Research and Translation for Health (EaRTH) Center. Dr. Woodruff previously served as a senior scientist and policy advisor for the U.S. EPA’s Office of Policy for 10 years.  Her current work focuses on uncovering and addressing environmental determinants of disease and health inequities especially with regards to children. Her research covers how harmful chemicals and pollutants impact health, reproduction, pregnancy, and child development using exposure assessment, environmental epidemiology and risk assessment of environmental chemicals. Dr. Woodruff has extensive research expertise in measuring maternal and fetal chemical exposures and their relationship to adverse reproductive and developmental health effects. She is also the principal investigator of an NIEHS-funded Environmental Health Core Infrastructure grant (EaRTH Center) focused on studying environmental influences on reproductive and developmental health. In her 25-year career she has published more than 220 peer-reviewed scientific articles, including publishing novel findings on multiple chemical exposures in pregnant women across the US and pioneering methods for measuring and interpreting prenatal chemical exposures. In addition, she leads efforts to translate scientific information into actionable change directly for patients and through public policy.

Dr. Nicholas Chartres
Dr. Nicholas Chartres is a Senior Research Fellow at The University of Sydney and is a member of the  Center to End Corporate Harm at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) where he studies tactics industries use to undermine science and regulations to protect their health-harming products, focusing on chemicals and ultra-processed foods. Nick is also a research methodologist and works with national and international organizations and agencies, including the World Health Organization, to conduct reviews of the evidence and develop guidelines using empirically based methods to ensure improved consistency, greater transparency, and reduced bias when evaluating the scientific evidence and formulating recommendations.