OBJECTIVES: As second most common female cancer worldwide, cervical cancer induces a tremendous health and monetary burden. Complementing traditional health economic evaluations’ focus on direct costs, we introduce a novel metric estimating economic returns on investment in prevention: the Health ROI Assessor framework. For the use case of the German cervical cancer screening (Papanicolaou testing), we illustrate value creation within and beyond the health sector as well as health-related productivity gains due to the intervention.

METHODS: We consider two dimensions of interconnected key economic effects. First, Health Economy effects: Value creation due to injected capital into the healthcare sector. Building on time-series analysis and Input-Output data, we estimate effects in the health economy, adjacent industries, and induced consumption effects. Second, Human Capital effects: Prevented cervical cancer deaths of different screening scenarios as compared to no screening are derived from previous scientific evidence, translated into gains in productive paid and unpaid work time and monetized according to sector-specific gross value added (GVA). The analysis considers a cohort of 100,000 15-year-old women followed over lifetime.

RESULTS: For every €1 m investment in cancer prevention in Germany, almost €2 m GVA and 5 jobs are created within and beyond the healthcare sector over three years. Productivity gains differ across screening programmes. The highest screening frequence evaluated (yearly) yields highest human capital gains: 33m hours in paid and 11m hours in unpaid work activity which corresponds to a monetary value of €328m.

CONCLUSIONS: The Health ROI Assessor framework opens a new perspective on health economic evaluation. Our results illustrate how investment in cancer prevention translates into value to society and may support policy decision making about effective resource allocation to as well as within the healthcare sector. Therewith, we contribute to a new understanding of health investments as driver of economic stability and growth.