Measuring Health Spillovers for Economic Evaluation: A Case Study in Meningitis
通过调查1218个受脑膜炎影响的家庭网络，量化了疾病对家庭成员健康的长期溢出效应，发现焦虑和抑郁风险显著增加，且影响范围超出直系亲属，为疫苗接种的经济评估提供了依据。
The health of carers and others close to the patient will often be relevant to economic evaluation, but it is very rarely considered in practice. This may reflect a lack of understanding of how the spillover effect of illness can be appropriately quantified. In this study we used three different approaches to quantify health spillovers resulting from meningitis. We conducted a survey of 1218 family networks affected by meningitis and used regression modelling to estimate spillover effects. The findings show that meningitis had long-term effects on family members' health, particularly affecting the likelihood of family members reporting anxiety and depression. These effects extended beyond a single close family member. These findings suggest that vaccinating against meningitis will bring significant health benefits not just to those that might have contracted the illness but also to their family networks. In methodological terms, different approaches for quantifying health spillovers provided broadly consistent results. The choice of method will be influenced by the ease of collecting primary data from family members in intervention contexts. © 2015 The Authors. Health Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.