Pan America (WHO - PAHO)

  • anguilla
  • antigua_and_barbuda
  • argentina
  • aruba
  • bahamas
  • barbados
  • belize
  • bermuda
  • bolivia
  • brazil
  • british_virgin_islands
  • cayman_islands
  • chile
  • colombia
  • costa_rica
  • cuba
  • dominica
  • dominican_republic
  • el_salvador
  • ecuador
  • french_guiana
  • grenada
  • guadalupe
  • guatemala
  • guyana
  • haiti
  • honduras
  • jamaica
  • martinique
  • mexico
  • montserrat
  • netherlands_antilles
  • nicaragua
  • panama
  • paraguay
  • peru
  • puerto_rico
  • saint_kitts_and_nevis
  • saint_lucia
  • saint_vincent_and_the_grenadines
  • suriname
  • trinidad_and_tobago
  • turks_and_caicos_islands
  • uruguay
  • venezuela

Enhancing Economic Capacity for Regional and Country-Level Priority Setting

DCPN worked with PAHO’s ProVac Initiative to strengthen the decision-making process for the introduction of new and underutilized vaccines. ProVac, funded through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was launched in 2006 to strengthen national-level capacity to make informed, evidence-based decisions regarding vaccine introduction. The initiative includes generating economic evaluation tools and methodology that will enhance the capacity of practitioners to set up programs for vaccine-preventable diseases. ProVac has already established Regional Centers of Excellence to help gather regional economic evidence and has created several models and on-line tools for cost-effectiveness estimation.

The second major element of the collaboration between DCPN and PAHO was development of a new evidence base evaluating the economic effects of NCDs. Topics include the macroeconomic consequences of NCDs in the Region, evaluation of multisectoral approaches to NCD prevention, and distributional effects of NCD policies. The work assessed how noncommunicable diseases affect development in the PAHO region. Particularly, the efforts of DCPN and PAHO are informing policy makers on how NCD prevention can improve equity and financial protection from health shocks. DCPN also provided workshops to train researchers in the PAHO Region in economic evaluation methodology, including extended cost-effectiveness analysis.