Resources Repository
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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…
Culture/Society | Priority Setting/Ethics | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Health Systems | Economics/Finance | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Global -
ReviewPublication 2016Decision Support for Infectious Disease Control
This report from RAND reviews decision-support tools, including models and nonmodeling approaches, that are relevant to …
This report from RAND reviews decision-support tools, including models and nonmodeling approaches, that are relevant to infectious disease prevention, detection, and response and aligns these tools with real-world policy questions that the tools can help address. This overview is designed to help modelers and other technical experts understand the questions that policymakers will raise and the decisions they must make. The report also presents policymakers with the capabilities and limitations of the different tools that may…
Military/Defense | Mathematical Models | State-Transition | Dynamic Transmission | Microsimulation | Dynamic Simulation | Infectious Diseases | Global Governance | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Global -
ArticlePublication 2016“Nudges” in Law and Policy
This article describes research on Americans’ preferences for types of “nudges” in the context of …
This article describes research on Americans’ preferences for types of “nudges” in the context of law and public policy—those that target “system 1” thinking, meaning the intuitive, emotion-based mechanisms, such as graphic warnings and default rules, versus those that target “system 2” thinking, the rational, deliberative form of cognition, such as statistical information or education-based messages.
Culture/Society | Decision Psychology | Preferences/Values | Priority Setting/Ethics | Policy/Regulation | Government/Law | Health/Medicine -
ArticlePublication 2015Valuing Regulations Affecting Addictive or Habitual Goods
The analysis of regulations affecting addictive or habitual goods has drawn considerable controversy. Some studies …
The analysis of regulations affecting addictive or habitual goods has drawn considerable controversy. Some studies have suggested that such regulations have only small welfare benefits, as consumers value these goods despite health benefits from quitting, while other studies suggest that information or behavioral problems make existing consumption decisions a poor guide to welfare evaluation. This analysis examines potential utility offsets to health benefits of regulations affecting addictive or habitual goods theoretically and empirically. The paper…
Culture/Society | Preferences/Values | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Chronic Disease/Risk | Social Determinants | Policy/Regulation | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | North America -
Tutorial/PrimerPublication, Teaching Resource 2015White Paper: Retrospective Benefit-Cost Analysis
In this article the authors consider how benefit-cost analysis can be used retrospectively to promote …
In this article the authors consider how benefit-cost analysis can be used retrospectively to promote understanding of the impacts after a policy is implemented. Serving as a brief primer, the authors propose that analysis can be useful for identifying needed reforms as well as in improving the conduct of future prospective analyses. The major challenges relate to estimating what would have occurred in the absence of the policy and separating the effects of the policy…
Culture/Society | Priority Setting/Ethics | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Social Determinants | Environmental Health | Policy/Regulation | Economics/Finance | Government/Law | North America | College | Graduate | Doctoral | Critical Thinking/Analysis | Policy Translation -
Working PaperPublication 2015Benefit-Cost Analysis and the Cities
This paper provides a short introduction to the use of benefit-cost analysis to assess interventions …
This paper provides a short introduction to the use of benefit-cost analysis to assess interventions undertaken at the city or municipal level. It introduces the concepts that underlie the conduct of benefit-cost analysis, describes the major analytic components, and discusses how to tailor the analysis to the characteristics of the policy and the resources available. It concludes with a list of references for those interested in learning more.
Culture/Society | Preferences/Values | Priority Setting/Ethics | Decision Analysis | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Social Determinants | Environmental Health | Policy/Regulation | Climate/Environment | Economics/Finance | Government/Law | North America | Critical Thinking/Analysis -
ReviewPublication 2015Agent-Based Models and Microsimulation
This article reviews the principles and applications of agent-based models (ABMs). ABMs are computational models …
This article reviews the principles and applications of agent-based models (ABMs). ABMs are computational models used to simulate the actions and interactions of “agents” within a system. Usually, each agent has a set of rules for how he or she responds to the environment and to other agents. These models are used to gain insight into the emergent behavior of complex systems with many agents, in which the emergent behavior depends upon the micro-level behavior…
Military/Defense | Mathematical Models | State-Transition | Microsimulation | Dynamic Simulation | Energy/Engineering | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology -
ArticlePublication 2015Benefits of Scaling a Home-Based Neonatal Care Package in Rural India
In 2011, India introduced a home-based newborn care (HBNC) package to be delivered by community …
In 2011, India introduced a home-based newborn care (HBNC) package to be delivered by community health workers across rural areas. The authors estimate the disease and economic burden that could be averted by scaling up the HBNC in rural India using IndiaSim, an agent-based simulation model. Under one scenario, the existing community health worker network begins providing HBNC for rural households without access to home- or facility-based newborn care. In the second scenario, coverage of…
Culture/Society | Costing Methods | Microsimulation | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Child/Nutrition | Health Systems | Health/Medicine | Asia & Pacific -
BookPublication 2016Foundations of Decision Analysis
This book is described by the authors as emerging from what they have learned by …
This book is described by the authors as emerging from what they have learned by "teaching decision analysis to thousands of people in the United States and around the world in university classes and special professional educational programs". The early chapters and certain later chapters are written to be accessible to a general audience. Chapters 1 through 17 introduce the foundations of decision analysis without requiring significant mathematical sophistication. Chapter 26 discusses multi-attribute decision problems…
Military/Defense | Decision Theory | Decision Psychology | Probability/Bayes | Decision Analysis | Operations Research | Business/Industry | Economics/Finance | Energy/Engineering | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Global