CHDS’s Ankur Pandya and colleagues propose a method to account for unknown equity weight values into distributional cost-effectiveness analysis (DCEA) in a recent Value in Health article. DCEA is a method of incorporating health inequalities into cost-effective analysis by considering how health improvements and costs are distributed across differing subgroups. In order to quantify those inequalities, DCEA requires an inequality aversion parameter (i.e., equity weight) value, which weighs trade-offs between maximizing population health versus strategies that distribute health and cost outcomes more evenly. As examples, they cite the instance of high-priced gene therapy for sickle cell disease, which is cost-ineffective but equity-improving.
In practice, the inequality aversion parameter value is often unknown for a given setting or difference. Ideally, policy makers can choose their parameter values based on the trade-offs they are or are not willing to make; because precise data on those parameters are often limited, however, the use of DCEA to aid policy decisions is also often limited. Pandya and colleagues propose a method to calculate what they label “threshold inequality aversion parameters” (TIAPs) that can be used in DCEAs to produce interpretable results even when the exact equity weight values are not known.
Co-authors on the article include: CHDS’s Andrea Luviano, current health policy doctoral student in decision science, and recent graduates Jinyi Zhu and Lyndon James.
Learn more: Read the full article, A Threshold Inequality Aversion Parameter Approach to Interpret Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Results
Learn more: Explore the CHDS Resource Pack: Extended Cost-Effectiveness Analysis
Learn more: Explore the CHDS approach to Cost-Effectiveness Analysis
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