Resources Repository
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ArticlePublication 2017Making Fair Choices on the Path to UHC: Applying Principles to Difficult Cases
Progress toward universal health coverage (UHC) requires making difficult trade-offs. The World Health Organization (WHO) …
Progress toward universal health coverage (UHC) requires making difficult trade-offs. The World Health Organization (WHO) Consultative Group on Equity and UHC has endorsed the principles for making such decisions. These principles include maximizing population health, priority for the worse off, and shielding people from health-related financial risks. But how should one apply these principles in particular cases, and how should one adjudicate between them when their demands conflict? This article by some members of the…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Government/Law | Culture/Society | Health Systems | Policy/Regulation | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | 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 | Government/Law | Health Systems | Decision Psychology | Infectious Diseases | Global Governance | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Global -
ArticlePublication 2016Maternal-Related Deaths and Impoverishment among Adolescent Girls in India and Niger
This article, published in BMJ Open, examined the distribution of maternal deaths and impoverishment among …
This article, published in BMJ Open, examined the distribution of maternal deaths and impoverishment among adolescent girls across socioeconomic groups in Niger and India, which have the largest fertility rate, and number of maternal deaths, respectively. Results showed that in Niger and India, the poorer adolescents had a larger number of maternal deaths compared to the richer. Impoverishment occurred mostly among the richer adolescents in Niger and among the poorer adolescents in India. Increasing educational…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Mathematical Models | Education/Labor | Health Systems | Costing Methods | Health Outcomes | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Maternal/Reproductive Health | Social Determinants | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Sub-Saharan Africa | Asia & Pacific -
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 | Government/Law | Education/Labor | Health Systems | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Policy/Regulation | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Sub-Saharan Africa | Middle East & North Africa | Latin America & Caribbean | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2016Defining a Health Benefits Package: What Are the Necessary Processes?
There is immense interest worldwide in the notion of universal health coverage. A major policy …
There is immense interest worldwide in the notion of universal health coverage. A major policy focus in moving toward universal health coverage has been on the key policy question: what services should be made available and under what conditions? This article focuses on how a feasible set of universal health coverage services can be explicitly defined to create what is commonly known as a “health benefits package”, a set of services that can be feasibly financed…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Government/Law | Culture/Society | Health Systems | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Global -
ReviewPublication 2001Modeling for Health Care and Other Policy Decisions: Uses, Roles and Validity
This is a review article of the role of modeling approaches to guide decision making …
This is a review article of the role of modeling approaches to guide decision making in health care and other domains. The role of models to support recommendations on the cost-effective use of medical technologies and pharmaceuticals is controversial. At the heart of the controversy is the degree to which experimental or other empirical evidence should be required prior to model use. The authors argue that the controversy stems in part from a misconception that…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Mathematical Models | Government/Law | Health Systems | Evidence Synthesis | Technology Assessment | Environmental Health | Policy/Regulation | Business/Industry | Climate/Environment | Economics/Finance | Energy/Engineering | Health/Medicine | North America -
ArticlePublication 2020Infectious Disease Pandemic Planning and Response: Incorporating Decision Analysis
During a pandemic, decisions must be made under rapidly changing, uncertain conditions. Despite advances in …
During a pandemic, decisions must be made under rapidly changing, uncertain conditions. Despite advances in analytical methods for gaining early situational awareness (i.e., of a disease’s transmissibility and severity) and for predicting the likely effectiveness of interventions, a major gap exists globally in terms of integrating this information in policy documents. The authors argue that mathematical and statistical models are important tools for pandemic planning and response. Once an outbreak of pandemic potential has been…
Mathematical Models | Government/Law | Health Systems | Decision Analysis | Health/Medicine | Global -
ArticlePublication 2018Trading Bankruptcy for Health: A Discrete-Choice Experiment
This article in Value in Health evaluates the importance of improved health as compared to …
This article in Value in Health evaluates the importance of improved health as compared to improved financial risk protection in the general United States population. Using a discrete-choice experiment, it finds that 31.3% of the population values cure at all costs, and 8.5% of the population use financial solvency to dominate medical decision making. This study shares insight to the US population values and trade-offs between health outcomes and financial health, and highlights the difficult…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Culture/Society | Health Systems | Preferences/Values | Health Outcomes | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | North America -
ArticlePublication 2017When Cost-Effective Interventions Are Unaffordable
Many health interventions deemed cost-effective are not affordable. Despite the importance of affordability to policymakers, …
Many health interventions deemed cost-effective are not affordable. Despite the importance of affordability to policymakers, little of the cost-effectiveness literature in global health addresses this issue. Budget impact analysis (BIA) describes an intervention's short-term costs and savings from the payer's perspective. This paper assesses the current use of budget impact analysis (BIA) and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) in health economic assessments conducted for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The authors recommend steps researchers and policymakers can…
Priority Setting/Ethics | Government/Law | Health Systems | Costing Methods | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Chronic Disease/Risk | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | Global