SUPPORT Tools for evidence-informed health Policymaking (STP) 16: Using research evidence in balancing the pros and cons of policies

This article is part of a series written for people responsible for making decisions about health policies and programmes and for those who support these decision makers. In this article, we address the use of evidence to inform judgements about the balance between the pros and cons of policy and programme options. We suggest five questions that can be considered when making these judgements. These are: 1. What are the options that are being compared? 2. What are the most important potential outcomes of the options being compared? 3. What is the best estimate of the impact of the options being compared for each important outcome? 4. How confident can policymakers and others be in the estimated impacts? 5. Is a formal economic model likely to facilitate decision making?