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Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: A Tutorial

2016

This tutorial explains distributional cost-effectiveness analysis as a framework for incorporating health inequality concerns into the economic evaluation of health sector interventions. Using an illustrative example comparing alternative ways of implementing the National Health Service (NHS) Bowel Cancer Screening Programme the authors describe the technical details of how to conduct distributional cost-effectiveness analysis. The 2 key stages are 1) modeling social distributions of health associated with different interventions, and 2) evaluating social distributions of health with respect to the dual objectives of improving total population health and reducing unfair health inequality. Authors identify the data requirements and the social value judgments that have to be made, and demonstrate the use of sensitivity analyses to explore the impacts of alternative modeling assumptions and social value judgments.

 

Source:

Asaria M, Griffin S, Cookson R. Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: A Tutorial. Medical Decision Making 2016; 36 (1): 8-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272989X15583266