Background
Far-right populist parties have gained significant electoral success across the world, yet little attention has been paid to whether and how they shape health and contribute to health inequalities.
Methods
We conducted a scoping review to synthesize the available evidence on the link between far-right populism and health. We searched PubMed and Scopus between May and June 2026 to identify studies investigating this link.
Results
The review suggests that the health consequences of far-right populism can be understood across at least three levels: (1) the individual level, at which support for far-right populist ideologies may decrease individual health and foster adverse health behaviors; (2) the interpersonal level, at which exclusionary rhetoric may foster discrimination, stigma, and social exclusion and hostile social climates, with implications particularly for marginalized groups; and (3) the societal level, at which far-right populist governance may influence population health via welfare chauvinism and exclusionary policies that affect the social determinants of health.
Conclusion
Based on the emerging patterns identified in our review, we propose a preliminary three-level framework for understanding how far-right populism may be linked to health. This framework helps to integrate existing findings across the individual, interpersonal, and societal level. The evidence base is still developing, and more systematic, longitudinal, and comparative research is needed to better understand potential causal relationships.

Drawing on our book Neoliberal Epidemics: How politics makes us sick (2nd edition, 2025), this article sets out how neoliberalism - the hegemonic political–economy of the last 50 years - has operated as a powerful upstream determinant of population health acting through four interlocking and mutually reinforcing pathways: widening socioeconomic inequality, chronic psychosocial stress, pervasive economic and social insecurity, and the growing power of the commercial determinants of health. Together, these pathways explain how political and economic choices translate into biologically embodied health outcomes over the life course. We illustrate our argument with a case study of austerity. Following Virchow’s insight that politics is medicine “on a large scale”, we conclude that under neoliberalism, health inequalities are inevitable. Addressing them therefore requires public health to confront the political and economic structures that systematically generate stress, insecurity, inequality and commercial harm, rather than relying on downstream or individual‑level interventions.

Citations

• Health Systems as Contested Ground
  Haejoo Chung, Carles Muntaner
  Health Politics.2026; 1(2): e006.     CrossRef