BACKGROUND Pandemic influenza may exacerbate existing scarcity of life-saving medical resources. As a result, decision-makers may be faced with making tough choices about who will receive care and who will have to wait or go without. Although previous studies have explored ethical issues in priority setting from the perspective of clinicians and policymakers, there has been little investigation...

AIM To identify main groups of stakeholders in the process of health research priority setting and propose strategies for addressing their systems of values. METHODS In three separate exercises that took place between March and June 2006 we interviewed three different groups of stakeholders: 1) members of the global research priority setting network; 2) a diverse group of national-level stake...

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. Policymakers have limited resources for developing--or supporting the development of--evidence-informed policies and programmes. These required resources include staff time, staff infrastructural needs (such as access to a lib...

AIMS AND BACKGROUND Waiting time for radiotherapy is a major problem in clinical practice. We developed a model to create a priority list of patients waiting for radiotherapy according to clinical criteria, where booking of patients is not on a "first-come, first-served" basis and where prioritization has not been left up to individual discretion. METHODS The system is based on an algorithm t...

Governments in low- and middle-income countries are legitimizing the implementation of universal health coverage (UHC), following a United Nation's resolution on UHC in 2012 and its reinforcement in the sustainable development goals set in 2015. UHC will differ in each country depending on country contexts and needs, as well as demand and supply in health care. Therefore, fundamental issues suc...

We address the problem of distributing safety-enhancing devices across a region, where each identical device provides for only local protection of the population. The devices protect non-identical sectors of the population. The sectors of population are exposed to nonidentical intensities of hazard. A method for the screening and prioritizing of needs for the protective devices is described. An...

This project continues a strong record of research in the Department of Bioethics that is aimed at facilitating fair and effective allocation of resources to promote health. The research involves a variety of methodologies including conceptual analysis and empirical methods including survey research, focus groups to promote democratic deliberation, secondary analysis of large datasets, and meta...

An increase in exclusive breastfeeding prevalence can substantially reduce mortality and morbidity among infants. In this paper, estimates of the costs and impacts of three breastfeeding promotion programmes, implemented through maternity services in Brazil, Honduras and Mexico, are used to develop cost-effectiveness measures and these are compared with other health interventions. The results s...