Details descriptions of the session:
Vaccination is one of the most life-saving public health interventions: for instance, during 2021, COVID-19 vaccines are estimated to have saved 14–20 million lives. However, several issues limit their deployment, such as difficulties in evaluating the full societal benefits of vaccine programs, in evaluating whether to switch to higher valency vaccines even at greater cost, and how to deal with transitions from one income bracket to another, which may lose international financial support to maintain vaccine programs.
Health technology assessment (HTA) is one way to provide information to support such financial investments, but standard, well-accepted methods in HTA may struggle to capture the full value of vaccination. Greater use of mathematical modelling in HTA can address this issue by capturing the indirect effects of vaccination and characterizing the changing individual and population level immunity thus engendered, but this fusion of fields has yet to become fully established.
This session will discuss some of the latest work in using mathematical modelling in HTA to provide better evidence to support governments’ and funders’ decision making in how best to change their vaccination programs.
Learning objectives and target audience:
The aim of the session is to provide a platform for experts working at the cutting edge of use of public health modelling in HTA to address issues that prevent optimal vaccination coverage being reached, and for those working in formulating vaccination policies to learn more of these methods, so that they may, we hope, incorporate them in their own policy making processes.
Structure of presentation:
The 75 minutes available in the session will be divided thus:
- Introduction (5 mins)
- Presentation 1 (10 mins)
- Presentation 2 (10 mins)
- Presentation 3 (10 mins)
- Buffer for overruns (5 mins)
- Panel discussion (30 mins)
- Summary (5 mins)
The presentations will set out the current state of the art and set the scene for the panel discussion. The presenters will return to be panellists to allow a synthesis of the main ideas they have raised and some discussion about recent issues in the field. This will mix predetermined questions, questions from the chair, and those from the floor. We intend that two chairs will handle different roles (introduction/summary and the management of the talks and panel discussion). The speakers will be confirmed if the session is accepted: we are thinking to involve speakers from Southeast Asia and the WHO.
