Resources Repository
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ArticlePublication 2016Departures from Cost-Effectiveness Recommendations: Health System Constraints
Cost-effectiveness analysis assumes a single constraint, in the form of the budget constraint, whereas in reality …
Cost-effectiveness analysis assumes a single constraint, in the form of the budget constraint, whereas in reality decision makers may be faced with numerous other constraints. The objective of this article is to develop a typology of constraints that may act as barriers to implementation of cost-effectiveness recommendations. Six categories of constraints are considered: the design of the health system; costs of implementing change; system interactions between interventions; uncertainty in estimates of costs and benefits; weak governance;…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Policy/Regulation | Health Systems | Education/Labor | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Sub-Saharan Africa | Middle East & North Africa | Latin America & Caribbean | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2015Salt Reduction Policy in South Africa: Extended Cost-Effectiveness Analysis
This paper is an extended cost-effectiveness analysis to model the potential health and economic impacts of …
This paper is an extended cost-effectiveness analysis to model the potential health and economic impacts of a salt reduction policy in South Africa. The authors used surveys and epidemiologic studies to estimate reductions in CVD resulting from lower salt intake. They calculated the average out-of-pocket (OOP) cost of CVD care and estimated the reduction in OOP expenditures and government subsidies due to the policy. They also estimated the costs of policy implementation and financial risk protection (FRP) benefits. The…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Policy/Regulation | Health Systems | Costing Methods | Chronic Disease/Risk | Food/Agriculture | Health/Medicine | Sub-Saharan Africa -
ArticlePublication 2015Universal Public Finance of Tuberculosis Treatment in India: An Extended CEA
This paper evaluates the consequences of universal public finance (UPF) for tuberculosis treatment in India …
This paper evaluates the consequences of universal public finance (UPF) for tuberculosis treatment in India using extended cost-effectiveness analysis (ECEA). The authors evaluated the impact of UPF on health gains, financial consequences, and catastrophic health expenditures, and concluded that the health gains and insurance value of UPF would accrue mostly to the poor. However, reductions in out-of-pocket expenditures were found to be more uniformly distributed across income quintiles. A variant on the base case suggests…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Policy/Regulation | Health Systems | Costing Methods | Health Outcomes | Infectious Diseases | Social Determinants | Clinical Care | Health/Medicine | Asia & Pacific -
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 | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Policy/Regulation | Infectious Diseases | Health/Medicine | Global | North America -
ArticlePublication 2016Economic Evaluation: Bibliometric Analysis of Recent Literature
This bibliometric analysis focuses on recently published full economic evaluations of health interventions and reflects …
This bibliometric analysis focuses on recently published full economic evaluations of health interventions and reflects critically on the implications of the findings. The authors created a database drawing on 14 health, economic, and/or general literature databases for articles published between 1 January 2012 and 3 May 2014 and identified 2844 economic evaluations. They examined the distribution of publications between countries, regions, and health areas studied and compared the relative volume of research with disease burden.…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Health Systems | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | Global -
ArticlePublication 2017Designing an Optimal HIV Programme for South Africa
This 2017 study compares the traditional and a novel method of comparing cost-effectiveness interventions in …
This 2017 study compares the traditional and a novel method of comparing cost-effectiveness interventions in the context of HIV in South Africa, using a modeling approach. The authors argue that the assumptions of a) independence of interventions, and b) linear scale-up effects do not hold because South Africa has a large domestically funded HIV program with highly saturated coverage levels. The authors therefore aim to better allocate resources for HIV interventions in South Africa when…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Operations Research | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Health Systems | Mathematical Models | Infectious Diseases | Health/Medicine | Sub-Saharan Africa -
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 | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Health Systems | Infectious Diseases | Chronic Disease/Risk | Mental Health | Health/Medicine | Global -
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…
Benefit-Cost Analysis | Business/Industry | Economics/Finance | Policy/Regulation | Mathematical Models | State-Transition | Infectious Diseases | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | North America -
ArticlePublication 2022Economic Evaluations of Health System Strengthening Activities
Health system strengthening (HSS) activities should accompany disease-targeting interventions in low/middle-income countries (LMICs). Economic evaluations …
Health system strengthening (HSS) activities should accompany disease-targeting interventions in low/middle-income countries (LMICs). Economic evaluations provide information on how these types of investment might best be balanced but can be challenging. This paper conducted a systematic review to evaluate how researchers address these economic evaluation challenges. The authors searches produced 1978 studies, out of which they included 36. Most studies used data from prospective trials and calculated cost-effectiveness directly from these trial inputs, rather than…
Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Policy/Regulation | Health Systems | Health/Medicine | Global