Equity, economic evaluation, and disease transmission modelling – 26-27th March 2018: Pre-meeting reviews

There is significant potential in using disease transmission models and economic evaluation frameworks to consider the equity of alternative courses of action in global health. The consideration of who is more or less advantaged, and how best to address these differences when they are unfair, is central to the rationale for the global health sector. Yet, economic evaluation typically assesses policy alternatives in terms of aggregate costs and consequences, not including information on who suffers costs and who gains. Further, it may be important to the policy question to consider the distribution of externalities in addition to direct costs and consequences. Disease transmission models are increasingly used for economic evaluation and are a suitable tool to simulate the externality effects of infectious disease interventions, accounting for changes in risk to others when an individual benefits from disease treatment or prevention. In this report, we examine the interface of these three domains: equity, economic evaluation, and disease transmission modelling. First, we present a descriptive review of concepts and methodological approaches and, second, an exploration of key methodological considerations when including equity into economic evaluations using transmission models.