Economic evaluation of combination vaccines: Enabling a more comprehensive assessment of their benefits and challenges

This peer-reviewed article in Vaccine examines how combination vaccines are currently assessed in economic evaluations and identifies important gaps in how their value is measured. Through a rapid review of the literature, consultations with immunization stakeholders and decision-makers, and engagement with health economics experts, the authors mapped and prioritized value drivers and metrics that could better capture the broader benefits, costs, and risks associated with combination vaccines. Based on this process, they developed a prioritized checklist designed to help analysts conduct more comprehensive economic evaluations of combination vaccines and support decision-makers in assessing their value for investment and adoption decisions.

Key insights

• Economic evaluations of combination vaccines often fail to capture their full range of benefits and challenges.
• Most existing studies compare vaccines to a no-vaccine baseline rather than comparing combination vaccines with delivery through separate single-antigen vaccines.
• Important value drivers identified include reduced injections, improved acceptability, better timeliness of vaccination, operational efficiencies, and reduced pressure on crowded immunization schedules
• The authors categorized value drivers and metrics according to their relevance to decision-makers, contribution to product value, quantifiability, and fit within existing economic evaluation frameworks.
• Based on this process, the authors developed a prioritized checklist intended to support more comprehensive assessment of combination vaccines in future evaluations.
• The checklist was refined through expert consultation and endorsed by WHO’s Immunization and Vaccines-related Implementation Research Advisory Committee.

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