 A holistic approach to the economic evaluation of health programs using institutionalist methodologyStephen Jan Social Science & Medicine, 1998, vol. 47, issue 10, 1565-1572 Abstract: The paper examines possibilities for employing more holistic approaches to the evaluation of health care programs. It is argued that the reductionism of conventional forms of economic evaluation, where value (or benefit) is seen in terms of either health consequences or individuals' utility, can cause a number of aspects of such programs to be overlooked. As such, this imposes fairly strict limits on the capacity of economic evaluation to inform public policy. In contrast, institutionalist economic theory in common with the community development approach to health promotion is an area of research which acknowledges that change to the broader socio-political environment can be a source of value. It is suggested that this idea has, for instance, significance for the evaluation of indigenous health programs where notions of "cultural appropriateness" have strong influence over the effectiveness and acceptability of such programs. It is concluded that no one evaluative approach is appropriate in all situations and that a greater receptiveness to broader sources of social value can help to improve the way evaluations are conducted. Date: 1998 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:47:y:1998:i:10:p:1565-1572 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.