Assessing the national essential medicines list selection processes: Instrument development and testing

Ekanki Saxena, Jillian C Kohler, Kevin E Thorpe and Nav Persaud

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 2, 1-17

Abstract: Background: National Medicines Policies use the National Essential Medicines Lists (NEML) to improve equitable access to medications. An effective list selection process should address a country’s priority healthcare needs and be aligned with WHO guidelines. Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop and test an instrument to measure the effectiveness of NEML selection process design. Methods: An instrument consisting of 16 items, along with an associated rating scheme, was created through a literature review and consultation with subject matter experts. Reliability was assessed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for absolute agreement and consistency. Validity was evaluated by comparing instrument scores with two proxy measures of NEML selection process effectiveness. Results: The total score for NEML selection process design effectiveness, based on ratings from 5 raters across 4 countries, demonstrated an absolute agreement ICC of 0.98 (95% confidence interval 0.91 to 0.99) and a consistency ICC of 0.97 (95% confidence interval 0.88 to 0.99). Instrument scores varied correspondingly with two proxy measures of NEML selection process effectiveness, indicating good validity. Conclusion: The instrument developed in this study measures the construct of NEML selection process design effectiveness, which essentially evaluates the alignment of national policy content with policy intent. The instrument demonstrated good validity and excellent reliability.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0342750 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 42750&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0342750

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0342750

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().