- theory and concepts
- decision theory
- decision psychology
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Resources Repository
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ArticlePublication 2017Household Expenditures on Pneumonia and Diarrhoea Treatment
This article, published in BMJ Global Health, quantifies household out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure for treatment of …
This article, published in BMJ Global Health, quantifies household out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure for treatment of childhood pneumonia and diarrhoea and estimates its impact on poverty for different socioeconomic groups in Ethiopia. The study finds that wealthier and urban households have higher OOP payments, but poorer and rural households are more likely to be impoverished due to medical payments. The present circumstances call for revisiting the existing health financing strategy for high-priority services that place a…
Costing Methods | Infectious Diseases | Child/Nutrition | Health Systems | Health/Medicine | Sub-Saharan Africa -
ArticlePublication 2017Likelihood Approach for Calibration of Stochastic Epidemic Models
Stochastic transmission dynamic models are especially useful for studying the early emergence of novel pathogens …
Stochastic transmission dynamic models are especially useful for studying the early emergence of novel pathogens given the importance of chance events when the number of infectious individuals is small. However, methods for parameter estimation and prediction for these types of stochastic models remain limited. This paper describes a calibration and prediction framework for stochastic compartmental transmission models of epidemics. The proposed method applies a linear noise approximation to describe the size of the fluctuations, and…
Dynamic Simulation | Infectious Diseases | Dynamic Transmission | Calibration/Validation | Health Systems | Health/Medicine | Global -
ArticlePublication 2016Funding Gap for Immunization Across 94 Low- and Middle-Income Countries
This analysis estimates immunization program costs, potentially available financing, and resulting funding gap for 94 …
This analysis estimates immunization program costs, potentially available financing, and resulting funding gap for 94 low- and middle-income countries over the five-year period of 2016–2020. Vaccine financing by country governments, GAVI, and other development sources was forecasted for vaccine, supply chain, and service delivery based on an analysis of comprehensive multi-year plans together with a series of scenarios. The authors found that that delivery of full vaccination programs across the 94 countries would result in a total…
Costing Methods | Infectious Diseases | Mathematical Models | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Health Systems | Global Governance | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Sub-Saharan Africa | Middle East & North Africa | Latin America & Caribbean | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2016Identifying Cost-Effective Dynamic Policies to Control Epidemics
This paper describes a mathematical decision model for identifying dynamic health policies for controlling epidemics. …
This paper describes a mathematical decision model for identifying dynamic health policies for controlling epidemics. The dynamic policies aim to select the best current intervention based on accumulating epidemic data and the availability of resources at each decision point. An algorithm is proposed to approximate dynamic policies that optimize the population's net health benefit, a performance measure which accounts for both health and monetary outcomes. The authors further illustrate how dynamic policies can be defined and…
Dynamic Simulation | Infectious Diseases | Mathematical Models | Dynamic Transmission | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Health/Medicine -
ArticlePublication 2016Global Burden of Latent Tuberculosis Infection
Given the importance of controlling latent TB infection (LTBI) as part of the End TB …
Given the importance of controlling latent TB infection (LTBI) as part of the End TB Strategy for eliminating TB by 2050, the authors felt that changes in demography and scientific understanding, and progress in TB control, made it necessary to re-assess the global burden of LTBI. The authors used constructed trends in annual risk in infection to calculate the number and proportions of individuals infected, recently infected, and recently infected with isoniazid (INH)-resistant strains, aggregated…
Evidence Synthesis | Infectious Diseases | Mathematical Models | Health/Medicine | Global -
GuidelinesPublication 2016Methods for Health Economic Evaluation of Vaccines
This article describes the development of a consensus for health economic evaluations of vaccines to …
This article describes the development of a consensus for health economic evaluations of vaccines to support the development of national guidelines in Europe. While guidelines advocating more standardization of health economic evaluations exist, this article aims to address several immunization-specific aspects (e.g. indirect effects or discounting approach) which are still a subject of debate. The systematic literature review search was informed by expert opinion. 2,838 articles were returned from the search and 26 were finally…
Costing Methods | Infectious Diseases | Dynamic Transmission | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Health Systems | Health/Medicine | Europe -
ReviewPublication 2016Choosing an Epidemiological Model Structure for Economic Evaluation
This review presents a taxonomy of epidemiological model structures and applies it to the economic …
This review presents a taxonomy of epidemiological model structures and applies it to the economic evaluation of public health interventions for non-communicable diseases. Growing pressures on health services and on social care have led to a greater need for prevention of chronic diseases. In order for decision makers to make informed judgements about how to best spend finite public health resources, they must be able to quantify the anticipated costs, benefits, and opportunity costs of…
Dynamic Simulation | Environmental Health | Mathematical Models | State-Transition | Dynamic Transmission | Microsimulation | Chronic Disease/Risk | Social Determinants | Health Systems | Climate/Environment | Culture/Society | Health/Medicine -
ArticlePublication 2016What Determines HIV Prevention Costs at Scale?
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention services for key populations are commonly delivered through NGOs. However, …
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention services for key populations are commonly delivered through NGOs. However, funding for HIV prevention remains scarce, and there are growing calls internationally to improve the efficiency of HIV prevention programmes as a key strategy to reach global HIV targets. To date, there is limited evidence on the determinants of costs of HIV prevention delivered through NGOs, and thus, policymakers have little guidance in how best to design programmes that are…
Costing Methods | Infectious Diseases | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Health Systems | Global Governance | Economics/Finance | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2016Using Top-Down and Bottom-Up Costing Approaches in LMICs
In the absence of routine cost data collection, estimating the incremental costs of scaling-up novel …
In the absence of routine cost data collection, estimating the incremental costs of scaling-up novel technologies in low-income and middle-income countries is a methodologically challenging and substantial empirical undertaking. Using the example of costing the scale-up of Xpert Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB)/resistance to riframpicin (RIF) in South Africa, the authors estimate costs, by applying two distinct approaches of bottom-up and top-down costing, together with an assessment of processes and capacity. The unit costs measured using the…
Costing Methods | Infectious Diseases | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Health Systems | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Global