Economics of Prevention
The programme for the first year of HENS included work on the economics of prevention. The aims were twofold:
- to begin addressing the need for more evidence on the economics of prevention
- to test how HENS might work as a way of accessing, disseminating, discussing and encouraging use of evidence on the economics of prevention
The economics of prevention was chosen as an area in which to test and develop HENS because it is an area where there is growing demand for health economics input. There is interest, for example on the part of Scottish Government, NHS boards and COSLA, in understanding which preventative public health policies and programmes represent the best use of resources. There is also interest in understanding whether and how prevention can free up resources by reducing demands on health and other public services. However, the economic analysis of preventative public health policies and programmes presents particular challenges. As a result, to date, the application of those methods to public health interventions has been limited and the economics evidence base remains underdeveloped.
Through HENS we therefore wanted to do four things in relation to the economics of prevention:
- identify robust evidence on the economics of preventive public health interventions
- share information on approaches to carrying out economic analysis of preventive public health interventions that address the challenges identified in the literature
- share experiences of ways of disseminating results of such analyses that have been effective in influencing policy and practice
- reach beyond the health sector and encourage use of health economics among non-health sector partners whose actions influence population health and health inequalities
These activites include collaborative workshops with What Works Scotland on translating knowledge on the economics of prevention into practice in a community planning context.