Resources Repository
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ArticlePublication 2023Benefits and Costs of COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates
Written mid-pandemic, this article evaluates the direct costs and health benefits of requiring COVID-19 vaccinations …
Written mid-pandemic, this article evaluates the direct costs and health benefits of requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for U.S. federal employees and healthcare and private sector workers. These mandates were controversial and some were halted by litigation. If they had been implemented as intended, the net benefits would depend on the course of the pandemic. If a more transmissible variant (such as Omicron) emerges, the net benefits may be large. If the pandemic instead fades, the benefits…
Mathematical Models | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Policy/Regulation | Infectious Diseases | State-Transition | Business/Industry | Economics/Finance | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | North America -
ArticlePublication 2022Vaccinations versus Lockdowns to Prevent COVID-19 Mortality
This analysis estimated the costs associated with preventing Covid-19 deaths by vaccinations versus lockdowns. Publicly …
This analysis estimated the costs associated with preventing Covid-19 deaths by vaccinations versus lockdowns. Publicly available datasets from the Israeli Ministry of Health were used to model the parameters of the pandemic in Israel. The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker was used for quantitative data on government policies. Data on the Israeli economy were taken from the Central Bureau of Statistics. The models demonstrate that the first lockdown prevented 1022 COVID-19 deaths at the cost…
Decision Theory | Decision Analysis | Policy/Regulation | Infectious Diseases | Costing Methods | Health Outcomes | State-Transition | Economics/Finance | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Middle East & North Africa -
ArticlePublication 2022COVID-19 Response: The Need for Economic Evaluation
COVID-19-related policies are fraught with trade-offs. Many of these trade-offs involve dimensions that can be …
COVID-19-related policies are fraught with trade-offs. Many of these trade-offs involve dimensions that can be quantitatively weighed using economic evaluation, such as those between health and cost outcomes. Other types of dimensions, such as those involving equity or autonomy, can be harder to quantify but should be considered in a comprehensive health policy decision-making context nonetheless. The authors of this New England Journal of Medicine Perspectives article outline how methods of economic evaluation and decision…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Policy/Regulation | Infectious Diseases | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Global | North America -
ArticlePublication 2021Rational Policymaking during a Pandemic
Policymaking during a pandemic can be extremely challenging. As COVID-19 is a new disease and …
Policymaking during a pandemic can be extremely challenging. As COVID-19 is a new disease and its global impacts are unprecedented, decisions are taken in a highly uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing environment. In such a context, in which human lives and the economy are at stake, the authors argue that using ideas and constructs from modern decision theory, even informally, will make policymaking a more responsible and transparent process.
Priority Setting/Ethics | Decision Theory | Policy/Regulation | Infectious Diseases | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | Global -
ArticlePublication 2018Equity Impact Vaccines May Have on Averting Deaths and Medical Impoverishment
In this analysis, authors estimated the number of deaths averted and the number of cases …
In this analysis, authors estimated the number of deaths averted and the number of cases of medical impoverishment averted of ten antigens and their corresponding vaccines across income quintiles for forty-one low- and middle-income countries. The study found that vaccines administered between 2016 and 2030 would prevent 36 million deaths. Vaccines will have the greatest impact on reducing cases of poverty caused by hepatitis B, helping an estimated 14 million people avoid medical impoverishment. An…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Mathematical Models | Global Governance | Infectious Diseases | Costing Methods | Health Outcomes | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Child/Nutrition | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | Sub-Saharan Africa | Middle East & North Africa | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2017Estimating the Fitness Cost and Benefit of Cefixime Resistance in Neisseria Gonorrhoeae
Gonorrhoea is one of the most common bacterial sexually transmitted infections in England, and more …
Gonorrhoea is one of the most common bacterial sexually transmitted infections in England, and more than half of annual infections occur in men who have sex with men (MSM). As the bacterium has developed resistance to each first-line antibiotic in turn, an improved understanding is needed of fitness benefits and costs of antibiotic resistance to inform control policy and planning. The authors developed a stochastic compartmental model representing the natural history and transmission of cefixime-sensitive…
Risk Analysis | Decision Analysis | Policy/Regulation | Infectious Diseases | Dynamic Transmission | Health Systems | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | Global -
ArticlePublication 2017Policy Makers, the International Community and the Population: Case Study on HIV/AIDS
A four-period game is developed between a policy maker, the international community, and the population. …
A four-period game is developed between a policy maker, the international community, and the population. This research supplements, through implementing strategic interaction, earlier research analyzing "one player at a time." The first two players distribute funds between preventing and treating diseases. The population reacts by degree of risky behavior which may cause no disease, disease contraction, recovery, sickness/death. More funds to prevention implies less disease contraction but higher death rate given disease contraction. The cost…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Mathematical Models | Global Governance | Infectious Diseases | Decision Psychology | Health Systems | Economics/Finance | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Global -
ArticlePublication 2016Challenges of Prioritization
Cost-effectiveness analysis has traditionally been applied primarily to very specific interventions, such as drugs and …
Cost-effectiveness analysis has traditionally been applied primarily to very specific interventions, such as drugs and diagnostics; in addition, the evidence base drawn on for evaluating such interventions is relatively good, given the medical research industry surrounding their testing. However, with increasing success in controlling infectious diseases, many of the health challenges facing countries concern broad threats to health with multiple causes, such as obesity, where the relationship between policy action and health benefit is not…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Mental Health | Infectious Diseases | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Chronic Disease/Risk | Health Systems | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Global -
ArticlePublication 2015Health Gains & Financial Risk Protection by Public Financing in Ethiopia: An ECEA
This article, published in the Lancet Global Health, aims to evaluate the health and financial …
This article, published in the Lancet Global Health, aims to evaluate the health and financial risk protection benefits of selected interventions that could be publicly financed by the government of Ethiopia. The authors used an extended cost-effectiveness analysis (ECEA) to assess the health gains (deaths averted) and financial risk protection afforded (cases of poverty averted) by a bundle of nine interventions that the Government of Ethiopia aims to make universally available. This approach incorporates financial…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Mathematical Models | Policy/Regulation | Infectious Diseases | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Maternal/Reproductive Health | Child/Nutrition | Chronic Disease/Risk | Health Systems | Health/Medicine | Sub-Saharan Africa