Siriporn Poripussarakul, Arthorn Riewpaiboon, David Bishai, John FP Bridges, Sripen Tantivess, Charung Muangchana
Mahidol University, Thailand
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA
Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program, Thailand
National Vaccine Institute, Thailand
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Prim Health Care
Statement of the Problem: The introduction of new vaccines depends on various criteria, including policies, clinical guidelines and economic considerations. Various stakeholders have differing criteria they view as important in selecting new vaccines. This study aimed to determine vaccine attributes importance to various stakeholders for new vaccine adoption in Thailand, using the best�worst scaling (BWS) method. Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: Seven vaccine attributes with three levels each, identified from a literature review and semi-structured interviews, were categorized into burden of disease, age group, budget impact, fever from vaccine, severity of disease, vaccine effectiveness and cost of vaccine. Main-effects orthogonal design was used to identify 18 scenarios. A postal survey was conducted among policy makers, healthcare professionals and healthcare administrators during October 2013 and January 2014. Respondents were asked to choose the most important and the least important choices in each scenario. Importance weights were estimated by a conditional logistic regression. Then the relative attribute importance was calculated by the difference between the maximum and minimum coefficient for each attribute divided by the sum of all differences. Findings: A total of seventy respondents completed the questionnaires. The attribute with highest importance for all groups was severity of disease (35.86%). Fever from vaccine (16.71%), burden of disease (13.48%) and budget impact (12.81%) were not much different importance from each other. For policy makers and healthcare professionals, the attributes with high importance were severity of disease (35.03% and 35.89%), fever from vaccine (22.88% and 16.08%) and burden of disease (14.82% and 15.25%), respectively; whereas the attributes with high importance for healthcare administrators were severity of disease (32.53%), budget impact (15.07%) and fever from vaccine (14.99%), respectively. Conclusion & Significance: The BWS method makes it possible to take into account multiple criteria from multiple stakeholders for new vaccine adoption. The results revealed the alignment of a desire for high protection against severe disease together with concerns about budget impact and safety of vaccine.
Siriporn Pooripussarakul is a PhD student in pharmacy administration, Faculty of Pharmacy, Mahidol University, Thailand. She has got the scholarship from the Thailand Research Fund through the Royal Golden Jubilee Ph.D. Program. She has her expertise in economic analysis of vaccine and health intervention. She also has clinical experience in chronic disease. Her interested area is evaluating economic outcomes of health interventions.
Email: srpk26@hotmail.com
