Social values international programme: integrating research and policy to ensure fair allocation of health care resources . HTAi Conference 2012 Panel Session Joint chairs Professor Peter Littlejohns and Professor Albert Weale

1. Social values international programme: integrating research
and policy to ensure fair allocation of health care resources
HTAi Conference 2012 Panel Session
Joint chairs
Professor Peter Littlejohns and Professor Albert Weale

2. Panel
Welcome and description of new research programme - Professor Peter Littlejohns
- 10 minutes
Questions and discussion - 5 minutes
Social Values and Normative Framework - Professor Albert Weale - 10 minutes
Questions and discussion - 5 minutes
Description of web resource and case study approach - Dr Sarah Clark – 10 minutes
Questions and discussion - 5 minutes
Case study from Thailand - Dr Sripen Tantivess – 10 minutes
Questions and discussion - 5 minutes
Case study from South Korea - Dr Jeonghoon Ahn - 10 minutes
Questions and discussion - 5 minutes
Special Edition describing the background to the research programme available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1477-7266&volume=26&issue=3

3. The Universal Health Challenge
People are living longer, have increasing expectations of what care
should be provided, and health care innovation continues to offer
ever greater options for intervention.
Policy makers face the challenge of setting health care priorities,
balancing the objectives of securing high quality, comprehensive
health care without creating financial barriers to access.
One way of dealing with these challenges is to search for greater
'value for money' in health care through evidence-based
assessment of interventions that work and are cost-effective.
Yet, there is no reason to think that hard trade-offs and tragic
choices can be fully overcome by greater efficiency in the use of
resources. Priority-setting and the exclusions from health care
coverage that it implies will be central features of health policy for
years to come in all countries.

4. A Balanced Approach
.
Priority setting involves technical analyses of clinical and cost
effectiveness, but it also requires judgements of social value. Such
values include justice, solidarity and autonomy.
Even scientific criteria such as clinical and cost effectiveness
presuppose social values in the assessment of the quality of life that
an intervention will deliver.
Social values are also relevant to the policy processes by which
priority-setting decisions are reached, since procedural values affect
the perceived sense of legitimacy of decisions. Such procedural
values include transparency, accountability and participation .
Value for money in health care means value for money in the light of
relevant social values.

5. But the big question remains
.
How is this done.............how should it be done ?

6. A new research policy network has been established
To provide a detailed mapping of the institutional
patterns and decision making protocols of health
care priority setting within a sample countries
including the UK, the US, South Korea, Thailand .
To assess the role that social value considerations
play in the policy paradigms of those countries.
To analyse and evaluate the role of social values in
decision making using the tools of normative political
theory.
To translate the research into the production of a
decision tool intended to aid decision makers in
identifying the role that social values should have in
priority setting.