By Public Health England (2018)
This resource has been developed to help commissioners provide cost-effective interventions to prevent cardiovascular disease.
Category: cost-effective
Sonntag. D. et al. Obesity Reviews, 2018; 19(5)
System‐based interventions are of increasing interest as they seek to modify environments (e.g. socio‐cultural system, transport system or policy system) that promote development of conditions such as obesity and its related risk factors. In our commentary, we draw attention to features of the system‐based approach that may explain the relative absence of economic evaluations of the cost‐effectiveness of these interventions, needed to guide decision‐making on which to deploy. We present and discuss potentially applicable methods and alternative approaches based on our experiences in two major system‐based interventions currently underway (in Melbourne, Australia and Gaggenau, Germany) that begin to fill this gap. We feel the issues and potential solutions outlined in this commentary are important for a broad range of stakeholders (e.g. clinicians, interventionalists, policy makers) to consider as they seek to address the issue of obesity.
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By Public Health England (2018)
Local public health teams are facing increasingly complex and challenging decisions over what services to invest in and disinvest from. The Prioritisation Framework is designed to help local authorities conduct a systematic prioritisation exercise, by greatly reducing the burden and complexity of the task.
The approach is based on Multi Criteria Decision Analysis, a recognised decision support technique which has been successfully used in a variety of contexts.
Throughout the tool, users are provided with extensive guidance and links to other relevant resources. A supporting materials pack is available from the PHE Health Economics team at healtheconomics@phe.gov.uk.
White, P. et al. Journal of Public Health, 2018, doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdy026
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Abstract
Background
Since 2013, local authorities in England have been responsible for commissioning preventative public health interventions. The aim of this systematic review was to support commissioning by collating published data on economic evaluations and modelling of local authority commissioned public health preventative interventions in the UK.
Methods
Following the PRISMA protocol, we searched for economic evaluations of preventative intervention studies in four different areas: overweight and obesity, physical inactivity, alcohol and illicit drugs use and smoking cessation. The systematic review identified studies between January 1994 and February 2015, using five databases. We synthesized the studies to identify the key methods and examined results of the economic evaluations.
Results
The majority of the evaluations related to cost-effectiveness, rather than cost-benefit analyses or cost-utility analyses. These analyses found preventative interventions to be cost effective, though the context of the interventions differed between the studies.
Conclusions
Preventative public health interventions in general are cost-effective. There is a need for further studies to support justification of continued and/or increased funding for public health interventions. There is much variation between the types of economically evaluated preventative interventions in our review. Broader studies incorporating different contexts may help support funding for local authority-sponsored public health initiatives.