Vaccination has historically been undervalued by economists and health technology assessment professionals who generally adopt a narrow, health-centric perspective in their analyses. This undervaluation reflects the fact that vaccination typically confers a broad set of benefits that go beyond improved health and reduced medical care costs. This situation raises the possibility that resources are being allocated sub-optimally with respect to vaccine coverage and new vaccine development since undervaluation naturally translates into underinvestment. Fortunately, approaches and tools are available to rectify this oversight and properly account for the full societal value of vaccination.
Many of these approaches and tools are currently being applied to assess the full societal value of prospective Strep A vaccination. In this presentation, I will discuss a framework defining vaccination’s broad health, economic, and social benefits and its application to Strep A vaccination; review studies of Strep A vaccination’s potential impact on antibiotic consumption for pharyngitis; and provide summary estimates of Strep A vaccination’s full societal value based on a value-of-a-statistical-life approach. I will also discuss recent efforts to estimate the optimal level of global research and development investment into Strep A vaccines.