How did European countries set health priorities in response to the COVID-19 threat? A comparative document analysis of 24 pandemic preparedness plans across the EURO region

Iestyn Williams, Lydia Kapiriri, Claudia-Marcela Vélez, Bernardo Aguilera, Marion Danis, Beverley Essue, Susan Goold, Mariam Noorulhuda, Elysee Nouvet, Donya Razavi and Lars Sandman

Health Policy, 2024, vol. 141, issue C

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments across the world to consider how to prioritise the allocation of scarce resources. There are many tools and frameworks that have been designed to assist with the challenges of priority setting in health care. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which formal priority setting was evident in the pandemic plans produced by countries in the World Health Organisation's EURO region, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This compliments analysis of similar plans produced in other regions of the world. Twenty four pandemic preparedness plans were obtained that had been published between March and September 2020. For data extraction, we applied a framework for identifying and assessing the elements of good priority setting to each plan, before conducting comparative analysis across the sample. Our findings suggest that while some pre-requisites for effective priority setting were present in many cases – including political commitment and a recognition of the need for allocation decisions – many other hallmarks were less evident, such as explicit ethical criteria, decision making frameworks, and engagement processes. This study provides a unique insight into the role of priority setting in the European response to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Priority setting; COVID-19; Europe; Document analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851024000083
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:141:y:2024:i:c:s0168851024000083

DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2024.104998

Access Statistics for this article

Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput

More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().