Assessing the Health and Welfare Benefits of Interventions Using the Wider Societal Impacts Framework

Abstract

Objectives

Health technology assessment bodies advocate capturing the value of interventions in terms of their benefits to health and broader welfare. The wider societal impacts (WSI) framework considers how changes in health alter a person’s net contribution to society—that is, what they produce minus what they consume. In this research, we review this framework and explore the scope to differentiate WSI by equity-relevant sociodemographic characteristics.

Methods

This research updates previous calculations using publicly available data from population-based surveys in the United Kingdom. We then estimate for 199 chronic conditions: (1) WSI for the average person with the condition and (2) gain in WSI for an improvement of 0.1 in health-related quality of life score.

Results

The nature and availability of information varied across population-based surveys and precluded analyses to examine WSI by population subgroup. Our updated estimates mirrored earlier findings that consideration of the broader societal impacts of health would reprioritize interventions compared with assessment on health alone. For example, for the same improvement in health, a woman experiencing diseases of the circulatory system has the highest potential gain in WSI (£354/month) whereas a man experiencing HIV has the lowest potential gain (£233/month).

Conclusions

The WSI framework provides a simple, indirect method to inform resource allocation decisions. Understanding the equity implications of this approach was hindered by differences in the information collected across population-based surveys. Findings demonstrate the potential reprioritization that may occur if the broader welfare benefits of health interventions were used to inform coverage decisions.