The economics of prevention

The synthesis explains how health economics evidence from the Prevention Centre can be used to demonstrate the large health and economic cost of inaction on preventive risk factors, highlight the current low and fragmented funding for prevention, demonstrate value for money of prevention interventions, and provide evidence of the co-benefits of interventions across sectors.

Some of the methods available to policy makers are summarised in an accompanying fact sheet and synthesis summary.

The knowledge synthesis was informed by dialogues with Prevention Centre policy partners. Knowledge was then synthesised across 20 Prevention Centre projects conducted from 2013–2023 that had a health economics component, plus relevant findings from several Centres of Research Excellence who are members of the Collaboration for Enhanced Research Impact.

Taken as a whole, this body of work found that preventive health interventions are likely cost-effective and incur cross-sectoral co-benefits.

However, broader economic evidence is needed to fully capture the range of impacts of preventive health policies. Full economic evaluations are currently the best way of gathering this evidence, says knowledge synthesis author Associate Professor Jaithri Ananthapavan.

An important finding is that Australia still has a limited health economics workforce in preventive health with the epidemiological/economic modelling skills required to demonstrate the health and economic impact of prevention.

“There is also a lack of capacity in health economics within health departments, and we need to build capacity and capability in the use of health economic evidence by policy makers,” Associate Professor Ananthapavan said.

“We found economic analyses are hampered by data gaps, including inadequate data related to the cost of program implementation and the short, medium and long-term impacts of policies.”

Lead author, Associate Professor Jaithri Ananthapavan

Our Emerging Leaders Network will be given an overview of the findings of the knowledge synthesis at an upcoming webinar on 18 July 2024. Register here