Session (CTI)

In an era of limited resources and increasing complexity, policy decision-making for population-level interventions, such as immunization programs, screening initiatives and linkage to care in oncology require careful balancing of clinical evidence, cost effectiveness, social values, equity, patient and public values and system-level priorities. This panel brings together experiences from Austria, Canada and Jordan to explore how different frameworks and institutional contexts shape decisions for population-level programs. Speakers will highlight how health technology assessment (HTA), and specifically economic evaluation, are integrated, or constrained, within broader decision processes. The Canadian experience will be used to illustrate Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization’s (NACI) application of a values-informed framework to complex vaccine decisions in the context of an expanded mandate. In Austria, new funding prompted rapid modeling to support decisions for over twenty vaccines and multiple population groups to inform vaccine prioritization within the additional funding envelope. In Jordan, evidence generation to support breast cancer screening initiatives highlight the challenges of designing programs across diverse implementation pathways, and patient-centered collaboration local priorities in the context of a recent adopter of HTA. Our discussion will draw attention to how domains within HTA decision frameworks and contextual factors, including trust in institutions, deliberative processes, system maturity, and political will, influence of real-world decision-making. We will start with a question to the audience “What factors do you think should weigh most in deciding whether a population health intervention is funded?” Following brief presentations, panelists will invite the audience to engage with provocative questions, share country experiences, and identify key research gaps. We will conclude with a collective discussion on how to better link evidence generation to actionable and equitable policies across diverse health systems, and provide an outlook on broader future societal impacts, including One Health.