RESUMEN
OBJECTIVES: Allocation of development aid for health is controversial and challenging. In recent years, several planning-software tools have promised to help decision-makers align resource allocation with their objectives, more clearly connect prioritisation to evidence and local circumstances, and increase transparency and comparability. We aim to explore these tools to provide insight into their fitness for purpose and suggest future directions to fulfil that promise. DESIGN: We identified seven tools that met the inclusion criteria and developed an evaluation framework to compare them along two dimensions for assessing fitness for purpose: ability to produce analyses adhering to principles laid out in the International Decisions Support Initiative (iDSI) Reference Case for health economic evaluations; and resources required, including expertise and time. We extracted information from documentation and tool use and sent this information to tool developers for confirmation. RESULTS: We categorise the tools into evidence-generating ones, evidence-syntheses ones and process support ones. Tools' fitness for purpose varies by the context, technical capacity and time limitation. The tools adhere to several reference case principles but often not to all of them. The source and underlying assumptions of prepopulated data are often opaque. Comparing vertical interventions across diseases and health system strengthening ones remains challenging. CONCLUSIONS: The plethora of tools that aid priority setting in different ways is encouraging. Developers and users should place further emphasis on their ability to produce analyses that adhere to prioritisation principles. Opportunities for further development include using evidence-generating tools and multicriteria decision analysis approaches complimentarily. However, maintaining tool simplicity should also be considered to allow wider access.
Asunto(s)
Países en Desarrollo , Pobreza , Humanos , Análisis Costo-Beneficio , Documentación , Ejercicio FísicoRESUMEN
INTRODUCTION: The WHO declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020. Since then, the world has been firmly in the grip of the COVID-19. To date, more than 211 730 035 million confirmed cases and more than 4 430 697 million people have died. While controlling the virus and implementing vaccines are the main priorities, the population mental health impacts of the pandemic are expected to be longer term and are less obvious than the physical health ones. Lockdown restrictions, physical distancing, social isolation, as well as the loss of a loved one, working in a frontline capacity and loss of economic security may have negative effects on and increase the mental health challenges in populations around the world. There is a major demand for long-term research examining the mental health experiences and needs of people in order to design adequate policies and interventions for sustained action to respond to individual and population mental health needs both during and after the pandemic. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This repeated cross-sectional mixed-method study conducts regular self-administered representative surveys, and targeted focus groups and semi-structured interviews with adults in the UK, as well as validation of gathered evidence through citizens' juries for contextualisation (for the UK as a whole and for its four devolved nations) to ensure that emerging mental health problems are identified early on and are properly understood, and that appropriate policies and interventions are developed and implemented across the UK and within devolved contexts. STATA and NVIVO will be used to carry out quantitative and qualitative analysis, respectively. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethics approval for this study has been granted by the Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics Committee of the University of Cambridge, UK (PRE 2020.050) and by the Health and Life Sciences Research Ethics Committee of De Montfort University, UK (REF 422991). While unlikely, participants completing the self-administered surveys or participating in the virtual focus groups, semi-structured interviews and citizens' juries might experience distress triggered by questions or conversations. However, appropriate mitigating measures have been adopted and signposting to services and helplines will be available at all times. Furthermore, a dedicated member of staff will also be at hand to debrief following participation in the research and personalised thank-you notes will be sent to everyone taking part in the qualitative research.Study findings will be disseminated in scientific journals, at research conferences, local research symposia and seminars. Evidence-based open access briefings, articles and reports will be available on our study website for everyone to access. Rapid policy briefings targeting issues emerging from the data will also be disseminated to inform policy and practice. These briefings will position the findings within UK public policy and devolved nations policy and socioeconomic contexts in order to develop specific, timely policy recommendations. Additional dissemination will be done through traditional and social media. Our data will be contextualised in view of existing policies, and changes over time as-and-when policies change.