New Recommendations for Economic Analysis of Vaccination Programs

ISPOR, the professional society for health economics and outcomes research, announced today the publication of new recommendations for economic analysis of vaccination programs given limited resources and budgets. The recommendations, issued by the ISPOR Economic Evaluation of Vaccines Designed to Prevent Infectious Disease: Good Practices Task Force, are applicable to countries of various income levels. The report, Economic Analysis of Vaccination Programs: An ISPOR Good Practices for Outcomes Research Task Force Report: An ISPOR Good Practices for Outcomes Research Task Force Report, was published in the October 2018 issue of Value in Health. 

The Task Force report provides good practice recommendations for three specific analysis methods-cost-effectiveness analysis, constrained optimization modeling, and fiscal health modeling-to assess the economic impact of vaccination and comparator programs to inform decision makers and budget holders. These 3 approaches are useful to decision makers with different policy objectives working in different decision contexts and the recommendations are applicable to high-, middle-, and low-income countries. These complementary methodological approaches can offer an integrated economic perspective of a new vaccination program’s value in a useful format for meeting policy objectives based on the best available evidence. 

The report presents 14 categories of best-practice recommendations and explanatory information for cost-effectiveness analysis, constrained optimization modeling, and fiscal health modeling. The recommendations are grouped into 4 main topics:

Decision description (policy objective, decision context and perspective)
Disease modeling approaches (model structure, time horizon, comparators, data requirements and sources, outcome measures)
Data evaluation (analysis method and interpretation, discount rates, uncertainty analysis, validation)
Logistics (software, transparency, reporting) 

“Our recommendations take a global perspective where the decision maker, along with the policy objective and decision context, determine which method(s) to use and how to operationalize each method and identify the input data needed,” said task force co-chair Josephine Mauskopf, PhD, vice president of health economics, RTI Health Solutions. “This report does not propose normative rules that identify desirable policy objectives or recommend specific methods to achieve each policy objective. However, decision makers in different decision contexts can use the best practices for the analyses described in this report to make sound decisions about a vaccination program.” 

Source: ISPOR-The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research