Campaign costing guidance

The How to Cost an Immunization Campaign guide released as part of the ICAN project in 2021 offers methodological advice for field researchers, country practitioners, and academics worldwide on costing an immunization campaign. The guide is also accompanied by supporting documents including practical tips for costing studies, data collection tools and practical examples on how to analyze costs.

Immunization campaigns are a vital delivery strategy to improve coverage and decrease morbidity and mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases. Campaigns are used more frequently to administer a greater variety of vaccines and reach a broader range of target populations as integral parts of the immunization program. It is crucial that the costs of different immunization campaigns, including those integrated with the delivery of other health interventions, are accurately estimated to inform planning, budgeting, and resource mobilization.

Health Systems Insight (formerly ThinkWell Institute) has developed methodological guidance to help standardize immunization campaign costing methods. Although various guidance documents cover the costing of health interventions and routine immunization programs specifically, none discuss the specifics of costing immunization campaigns. This new guide offers methodological advice for field researchers, country practitioners, and academics worldwide on costing an immunization campaign. This guide complements the literature on costing studies with specific methodological considerations for immunization campaigns, clear instructions fitting potential scenarios, and concrete examples. It is intended to improve the standardization of campaign costing processes and reporting, enhance the availability and comparability of evidence, and improve its use by country and global stakeholders.

How to cost an immunization campaign? Methodological guidance 

This guide offers methodological advice for costing an immunization campaign, and complements the literature on costing studies with specific methodological considerations for immunization campaigns, clear instructions fitting potential scenarios, and concrete examples. It is intended to improve the standardization of campaign costing processes and reporting, enhance the availability and comparability of evidence, and improve its use by country and global stakeholders.

These are a set of data collection and analysis templates for immunization campaign costing studies, including tools for facility, district, regional/state and national/federal levels and an accompanying user manual. Practical examples in Excel and R: annualizing capital costs, calculating unit costs, and calibration in R with a guide to the code. You can download R using this link.