The campaign urges health organisations to audit communications contracts, reject fossil fuel-linked agencies and use procurement power to align public health missions with climate commitments.
Health groups on 9 Sept 2026 launched an online toolkit exposing communications agencies they say are hired by the health sector to promote wellbeing and sustainability while also working for fossil fuel companies linked to pollution, climate change and health harms.
The “Fossil Public Relations Toolkit”, launched by the Global Climate and Health Alliance and Clean Creatives, names PR companies including Edelman, Publicis, Hawker Britton and VML as examples of agencies that work with the health sector while also serving fossil fuel companies such as Shell, ConocoPhillips and Saudi Aramco.
The toolkit shows relationships between health organisations, communications agencies and fossil fuel clients, and says agencies paid to build public trust around disease prevention, sustainability and wellbeing are also providing communications services to businesses involved in the extraction, sale and use of fossil fuels.
It was released a week after a UNEP report found that global temperatures are set to rise above 1.5°C, with devastating impacts on people’s health.
The toolkit contrasts the USD$44 billion spent by healthcare businesses on PR and advertising in 2024 with the estimated USD$7 billion spent by fossil fuel companies in the same year. It says health organizations outspend fossil fuel companies six-to-one, giving them the purchasing power to set terms in the agency relationships they fund and leverage to change agency behaviour.
“Around the world, the health sector relies on communications agencies to build credibility, earn public trust and communicate evidence that can protect people’s lives,” said Shweta Narayan, Campaign Lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “But when the same agencies also help fossil fuel companies protect their reputation, greenwash their activities or sustain public acceptance of an industry whose products are damaging health, this suggests a serious conflict of interest. Health organisations must know who their communications partners work for and ask whether those relationships are compatible with their mission.”
Fossil fuels are the principal driver of climate change and a major source of health-damaging air pollution. The fossil fuel industry also invests heavily in advertising, public relations, sponsorship and other communications strategies to shape public perceptions of its products and role in society.
“Health leaders have long understood that climate change is a public health emergency”, said Laura Ranzato, Executive Director of Clean Creatives. “Yet many pharmaceutical and healthcare companies are directing their communications budgets to fund agencies that simultaneously help fossil fuel companies harm their patients, disrupt their supply chains, and undermine their missions. Health organizations have both the obligation and the market power to change that. We are calling on them to use that purchasing power: choose agencies that do not work with fossil fuel clients.”
The toolkit asks health institutions to audit whether advertising, public relations, communications and event partners also work for fossil fuel companies; reject agencies that promote fossil fuel expansion, greenwashing or climate disinformation; and commit to a fossil-free communications policy and join the Break the Fossil Influence commitment.
The toolkit is the latest phase of the Break the Fossil Influence – Fossil-Free Health Communications campaign, launched by GCHA in May 2025. Since then, 119 health organisations have committed to no longer working with advertising and public relations agencies that also serve the fossil fuel industry.
Signatories include Médecins Sans Frontières, Amref Health Africa, The Lancet, the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations, the World Federation of Public Health Associations, the World Organisation of Family Doctors and the Yale Centre on Climate Change and Health.
The Fossil PR Toolkit builds on the Break the Fossil Influence campaign by giving health organisations a practical tool to examine their own communications relationships. Its case studies highlight contradictions that can arise when agencies work across both health and fossil fuel accounts, and encourage health organisations to consider the reputational, ethical and public health implications of those relationships.
The campaign also encourages health organisations to incorporate fossil fuel client screening into procurement processes and requests for proposals, to help ensure that institutional spending and communications practices align with public health and climate commitments.
“For health organisations, this is not simply a question of communications ethics,” Narayan said. “It is an issue of public health integrity, conflict of interest and credibility. Organisations cannot credibly protect the people from the health harms generated by the climate crisis while directing communications budgets to agencies that help greenwash the industry responsible for those harms.”
“Just as health leaders once stood up to Big Tobacco and its advertising, the health sector must now stand up to Big Oil”, said Jeni Miller, Global Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “Health organisations must exercise their power not only through the positions they take publicly, but through the companies they choose to work with. Communications budgets should help protect health, and should not be used to support businesses that help polluters maintain their influence and green their profile while they continue to perpetuate harm.”
When the Break the Fossil Influence campaign launched during the World Health Assembly in Geneva in May 2025, 30 organisations representing the interests of more than 12 million health professionals had made the Fossil-Free Health Communications commitment.
That number has now grown to 119 health organisations, reflecting what the campaign describes as growing recognition that health leadership on fossil fuels must extend beyond public statements and operational sustainability to the organisations and industries that health institutions choose to support through their spending.
The campaign draws on lessons from public health action on tobacco, where health organisations increasingly recognised that partnerships with companies and intermediaries supporting the tobacco industry were incompatible with their health mission.
The Fossil PR Toolkit will be shared with health systems, professional associations, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, foundations, non-profit organisations, sustainability leaders and advertising, PR and communications professionals to encourage more health institutions to review their agency relationships.
