In recent years, academics and policymakers have increasingly recognized that the societal value of vaccination encompasses overall health, economic, and social benefits beyond avoided morbidity and mortality due to infection by the targeted pathogen and limited health care costs. Nevertheless, standard economic evaluations of vaccines continue to focus on a relatively narrow set of health-centric benefits, with consequences for vaccination policies and public investments.
Researchers from the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, have published an article discussing ways to allocate societal resources in the service of population health and how much we stand to gain from that spending. The article is intended to convince more policymakers to identify and account for the full societal impacts of infectious disease when evaluating the potential benefits of vaccination.
Any organization or individual working in the field of immunization economics can submit findings, opportunities, calls to action, or other relevant work below to be shared with our community.