Resources Repository
-
ArticlePublication 2007Decision Analysis: A Personal Account of How It Got Started and Evolved
In this chapter, Howard Raiffa discusses the evolution of decision analysis and his personal involvement …
In this chapter, Howard Raiffa discusses the evolution of decision analysis and his personal involvement in its development. He describes the early days of Operations Research (OR) in the late 1940s with its approach to complex, strategic decision making. After reading John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1947) and Abraham Wald’s two books (1947, 1950), he became involved in statistical decision theory. A few years later, after reading Leonard…
Operations Research | Decision Theory | Decision Analysis | Health/Medicine | Economics/Finance | Probability/Bayes | Preferences/Values | Business/Industry | Energy/Engineering -
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 | Health/Medicine | Economics/Finance | State-Transition | Infectious Diseases | Policy/Regulation | Business/Industry | Government/Law | 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 | Health/Medicine | Economics/Finance | Costing Methods | Health Outcomes | State-Transition | Infectious Diseases | Policy/Regulation | Government/Law | Middle East & North Africa -
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…
Mathematical Models | Operations Research | Health/Medicine | Economics/Finance | Priority Setting/Ethics | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Health Systems | Sub-Saharan Africa -
ArticlePublication 2015Population Health Model (POHEM): An Overview
This paper provides an overview of the rationale, methodology and applications of the Population Health …
This paper provides an overview of the rationale, methodology and applications of the Population Health Model (POHEM). POHEM is a health microsimulation model, developed at Statistics Canada in the early 1990s. The authors describe that POHEM draws together rich multivariate data from a wide range of sources to simulate the lifecycle of the Canadian population, specifically focusing on aspects of health. The model dynamically simulates individuals’ disease states, risk factors, and health determinants, in order…
Mathematical Models | Calibration/Validation | Health/Medicine | Economics/Finance | Costing Methods | Evidence Synthesis | Microsimulation | Chronic Disease/Risk | Health Systems | Policy/Regulation | Clinical Care | North America -
ArticlePublication 2010Model Uncertainty in Economic Evaluation of Health Interventions: Rotavirus Vaccination in Vietnam
Motivated by observed discrepancies between 2 published studies on the cost-effectiveness of rotavirus vaccination in …
Motivated by observed discrepancies between 2 published studies on the cost-effectiveness of rotavirus vaccination in Vietnam, the authors' objectives were to illustrate a specific, systematic approach to assessing model (structure and process) uncertainty and to quantify explicitly the contributions of different sources of variation in the outputs of different studies that share the same research question. On the basis of a series of working definitions of key model elements, the authors developed 5 alternative computer…
Mathematical Models | Calibration/Validation | Health/Medicine | Economics/Finance | State-Transition | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2008Mathematical Models of Cervical Cancer Prevention in the Asia Pacific Region
This article reports on a model-based approach to estimate averted cervical cancer cases and deaths, …
This article reports on a model-based approach to estimate averted cervical cancer cases and deaths, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (I$/DALY averted) for vaccination of young adolescent girls against human papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18. The authors used population-based and epidemiologic data for 25 countries in Asia (22 GAVI-Alliance eligible countries, Thailand, China and Japan). They found that an absolute reduction in lifetime cancer risk varied across countries, depending on incidence,…
Mathematical Models | Calibration/Validation | Health/Medicine | Economics/Finance | Microsimulation | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Chronic Disease/Risk | Health Systems | Science/Technology | Asia & Pacific -
ArticlePublication 2008Cost-Effectiveness of Rapid Point-of-Care Prenatal Syphilis Screening in Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper investigates the cost-effectiveness of using rapid point-of-care tests for prenatal syphilis screening among …
This paper investigates the cost-effectiveness of using rapid point-of-care tests for prenatal syphilis screening among pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with syphilis prevalence rates as high as 17%, and where traditional multi-test screening methods have been challenging to implement. Focusing on newly available rapid point-of-care screening tests, strategies differed by the initial test [rapid plasma reagin (RPR), immunochromographic strip (ICS)], need for confirmation with Treponema pallidum hemagglutination assay, and number of visits required.…
Mathematical Models | Test Performance | Technology Assessment | Health/Medicine | Costing Methods | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Maternal/Reproductive Health | Clinical Care | Sub-Saharan Africa -
ArticlePublication 2016Cost-Effectiveness of Routine Vaccination With a Live-Attenuated Dengue Vaccine: Model Comparison
Large Phase III trials across Asia and Latin America have demonstrated the efficacy of a recombinant, …
Large Phase III trials across Asia and Latin America have demonstrated the efficacy of a recombinant, live-attenuated dengue vaccine (Dengvaxia) over the first 25 months following vaccination. Subsequent data collected in the longer-term follow-up phase, however, have raised concerns about a potential increase in hospitalization risk of subsequent dengue infections, in particular among young, dengue-naïve vaccinees. This paper reports predictions from eight independent modelling groups on the long-term safety, public health impact, and cost-effectiveness of routine…
Mathematical Models | Health/Medicine | Climate/Environment | Economics/Finance | Dynamic Transmission | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Child/Nutrition | Health Systems | Global Governance | Latin America & Caribbean | Asia & Pacific