van der Putten Ingeborg M, Paulus Aggie T G, Evers Silvia M A A, Hutubessy Raymond C W, Hiligsmann Mickael
CAPHRI, School of Public Health and Primary Care, Department of Health Services Research, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.
Initiative for Vaccine Research, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
Biomed Res Int. 2016;2016:6267343. doi: 10.1155/2016/6267343. Epub 2016 Dec 12.
Understanding the most important economic impacts of vaccines can provide relevant information to stakeholders when selecting vaccine immunization strategies from a broader perspective. This study was therefore designed to first identify economic impacts to vaccinated individuals and, second, assess the relative importance of these economic impacts. A four-step approach was used, including a review of the literature, a pilot study, and expert consultation. As a fourth step, a survey utilizing a best-worst scaling was conducted among 26 different stakeholders to assess the relative importance of the identified economic impacts. In each of the 15 choice tasks, participants were asked to choose the most important and the least important economic impact from a set of four from the master list. We identified 23 economic impacts relevant for vaccine introduction. Four domains were identified, namely, health related benefits to vaccinated individuals, short- and long-term productivity gains, community or health systems externalities, and broader economic indicators. The first domain was seen as especially important with mortality, health care expenditure, and morbidity ranking in the top three overall. In conclusion, our study suggests that domain A "health related benefits to vaccinated individuals" are valued as more important than the other economic impacts.
