New “Fossil PR Toolkit” reveals how agencies
trusted to promote health and wellbeing also work for fossil
fuel companies that drive pollution, climate change, and
health harms.
9 Sept
2026 – A new
online toolkit exposes how communications agencies hired
by the health sector to promote health, wellbeing and
sustainability are also aiding fossil fuel companies to
green their public profile, thus maintaining public support
for continued coal, oil and gas production.
The “Fossil
Public Relations Toolkit”, launched today by the Global
Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA) and Clean
Creatives, features PR companies such as Edelman,
Publicis, Hawker Britton and VML that work with the health
sector to promote human health, while also serving fossil
fuel companies like Shell, ConocoPhillips and Saudi Aramco,
in order to demonstrate the relationships and between health
organisations, communications agencies and fossil fuel
clients.
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The Fossil
Public Relations Toolkit shows how communications and PR
agencies are paid to build public trust and communicate
about disease prevention, sustainability, and wellbeing,
while simultaneously providing communications services to
businesses that contribute to air pollution, climate change,
and serious health harms through the extraction, sale and
use of fossil fuels.
Released a week after a UNEP
report finds that global
temperatures are set to rise above 1.5°C, with
devastating impacts on people’s health, the toolkit
also contrasts the USD$44 billion spent
by healthcare businesses on PR & advertising in
2024, to the estimated USD$7
billion spent by fossil fuel companies in the same year
and provides several case studies that demonstrate how the
health sector’s significant spending power is used. Health
organizations outspend fossil fuel companies six-to-one,
giving them the purchasing power to set the terms of the
agency relationships they fund, and leverage to change
agency behavior..
“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. At the
same time, the
fossil fuel industry 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 take three practical
steps:
- Audit: Review whether
advertising, public relations, communications and event
partners also work for fossil fuel
companies. - Reject: Avoid
appointing agencies that promote fossil fuel expansion,
greenwashing or climate
disinformation. - Commit: Adopt 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
work with advertising and public relations agencies that
also serve the fossil fuel industry. Signatories
include major global health organisations and professional
associations such as 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.
From commitment to
accountability
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. The case studies highlight the
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, helping 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.”
Health sector
leadership is growing
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 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,
and sustainability leaders, as well as advertising, PR, and
communications professionals, to encourage more health
institutions to review their agency
relationships.
Notes:
About
GCHA: The Global Climate and Health Alliance is a
consortium of more than 300 health professional and health
civil society organisations and networks from around the
world addressing climate change. We are united by a shared
vision of an equitable, sustainable future, in which the
health impacts of climate change are minimised, and the
health co-benefits of climate change mitigation are
maximised.
Find out more: https://climateandhealthalliance.org/who-we-are/about/
About
Clean Creatives: Clean Creatives is an
award-winning campaign group advocating for an industry-wide
movement in advertising and PR, where agencies and creatives
pledge to refuse future work with fossil fuel corporations.
To date, more than 1,650 agencies and 4,600 creatives
globally have signed the Clean Creatives pledge. The
campaign is known for its data-led reports on fossil fuel
contracts, including the F-List, and for pressuring B Lab to
revoke Havas’ B Corp status after it won a Shell
contract.
Clean Creatives Website: cleancreatives.org
