Since 2016, ThinkWell has led several projects aiming to increase the availability, understanding, visibility, and use of economic evidence on the delivery of immunization services. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we have developed methodological guidance on how to cost immunization campaigns, maintained the most comprehensive, standardized global database of evidence on the cost of delivering vaccines, created an evidence-to-policy and -practice framework to improve uptake of immunization cost evidence, and composed a series of immunization delivery costing studies.
From routine immunization to campaigns, COVID-19 vaccination, and the economics of reaching zero-dose children, ThinkWell’s studies cover a range of immunization strategies. Find details of our various projects below.
ThinkWell implemented a project that will to generate high-quality evidence on the cost of interventions that target zero-dose children. In Ethiopia, Nigeria and Pakistan, we worked together with local research partners to analyze the cost and outputs of selected interventions, to support governments in improving equitable resource allocation for immunization programs.
ThinkWell and John Snow Inc. (JSI) supported the Immunization Costing Action Network (ICAN), a research and learning network working to increase the visibility, availability, understanding, and use of immunization delivery cost information. As part of ICAN, ThinkWell completed a systematic review on the cost of delivering vaccines across different low- and middle-income countries and through a variety of vaccine delivery strategies. From the compiled evidence, ThinkWell developed the Immunization Delivery Cost Catalogue (IDCC)―the most comprehensive, current, and standardized global evidence―and companion products to help interpret the evidence.
ThinkWell is conducting bottom-up costing studies of COVID-19 vaccine delivery in Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mozambique, the Philippines, Uganda, and Vietnam to generate economic evidence to the support governments to plan for future delivery of COVID-19 vaccines and other immunization services using a standardized approach. In collaboration with ministries of health and local research institutions, we are estimating the cost of delivering COVID-19 vaccines at various points in time, through various delivery strategies and at varying levels of delivery volume, as well as assessing the operational and financial challenges encountered by stakeholders at all levels.
ThinkWell also contributed to a global-level modeling of COVID-19 vaccine delivery costs in COVAX countries.
Following disruption to immunization services during the COVID-19 pandemic, ThinkWell responded with analyses estimating the additional operational cost of implementing campaigns and conducting routine outreach services during the pandemic while incorporating a range of protective measures, and collaborated with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on an analysis for routine fixed site delivery. Read the publication on this work in Vaccine.
Further to this, the team conducted an analysis estimating the potential additional operational cost of a house-to-house oral polio vaccine (OPV) supplemental immunization activity (SIA) held during the COVID-19 pandemic.
ThinkWell has developed methodological guidance to help standardize immunization campaign costing methods. To inform the development of the guidance, ThinkWell conducted three campaign costing studies in India, Nigeria and Sierra Leone to test and refine the methodology and tools.
The Immunization Costing Action Network (ICAN) was comprised of three member countries―Indonesia, Tanzania, and Vietnam―with country teams that included health economist researchers, immunization managers, and planners from ministries of health. The country teams conducted costing studies that explored the cost of delivering vaccines through different delivery strategies to diverse geographies and to distinct target populations. ThinkWell and JSI facilitated the Immunization Costing Action Network to encourage cross-country knowledge sharing and co-production of effective strategies for generation and use of cost evidence.
