This study sketches out the implications of trade law for domestic attempts to address noncommunicable disease. Much remains to be written about this subject. Nonetheless, I hope that this work fills some gaps in the literature and raises questions for further research.

Although this study lies at the intersection of trade law and public health, it is a legal study. The difficulty associated with differing research methodologies meant that a choice had to be made in favor of one discipline or another. The choice to cast this work as a legal study has the advantage of permitting a deeper legal analysis of some issues, but the disadvantage of being less accessible to members of the public health community who do not have legal training. There is some inevitable trade-off in this approach, and my hope is that this study will help public health lawyers and trade lawyers bridge gaps between their fields.

This study also straddles the fields of international trade law, global/international health law, and public international law. There is a very real chance that the study will leave trade lawyers wanting a more detailed analysis of trade law and public health lawyers wanting more detailed analysis of international law in a health context. Unfortunately, this is an inevitable consequence of a monograph that does not seek to cover the field. The intention of this study is not to end all debates about application of trade law to noncommunicable disease.