Dr Phaedra Corso Discusses How to Incorporate Economic Research Into Health Policy

It is important to consider the cost-effectiveness of interventions in order to prioritize resources and maximize impact, says Phaedra Corso, PhD, associate vice president for research at Indiana University.

Transcript

How can economic research methods effectively inform public health policy decisions?

I think in the world of public health, we are doing a good job of looking at the evidence of our interventions in terms of the effectiveness of prevention interventions within a community, for example. The way that economic evidence plays a role there is, we don't just look at how effective our interventions are, but we look at how cost effective interventions are. More and more, as public health resources are becoming scarce, policy makers really do need to know about their returns on investment, and that's what economic evidence provides the answer to.

What challenges do policy makers face when incorporating economic research findings into public health policy, and how can these challenges be addressed?

I think one of the big challenges for policy makers who want to consider economic evidence in their decision-making is the lack of evidence, in particular. So just as an example, The Guide to Community Preventive Services, which looks at the effectiveness of public health interventions, also has a component that looks systematically at the evidence of economic evidence. And oftentimes, there's only 1 or 2 studies available. And so, they may have a lot of evidence on the effectiveness, but very little evidence on cost effectiveness. It's the lack of research in that area that causes, perhaps, the biggest problem.

I would say another challenge for policy makers who want to use economic evidence for public health interventions is the fact that a lot of times, the evidence we have an effectiveness is a preliminary outcome measure, like cases prevented, instead of looking at a more final outcome, like lives saved. And so, when you look at cases prevented, you have to look at economic evidence that is similar to that type of evidence. So, it has to be cases of hepatitis prevented, for example. In cases of hepatitis prevented, as opposed to cases of lives saved, or cost per lives saved, where you could look across public health interventions. The issue that I'm talking about is looking at more intermediate outcome measures, as opposed to long-term outcome measures in public health.