title: Economic Evaluation of Vaccination Programmes in Older Adults and the Elderly: Important Issues and Challenges.
abstract: High-income countries are undergoing demographic transitions towards populations with substantial larger proportions of older adults. Due to the increased susceptibility of older adults to infectious diseases and their consequences, vaccination programmes are an important health intervention to help maintain healthy ageing. While much of the existing literature suggests that current vaccination programmes targeted at older adults and the elderly are likely to be cost effective in high-income countries, we argue that it is important to more fully consider some important issues and challenges. Since the majority of vaccines have been developed for children, economic evaluations of vaccination programmes have consequentially tended to focus on this age group and on how to incorporate herd-immunity effects. While programmes targeted at older adults and the elderly may also induce some herd effects, there are other important challenges to consider in these economic evaluations. For example, age and time effects in relation to vaccine efficacy and duration of immunity, as well as heterogeneity between targeted individuals in terms of risk of infection, severity of disease and response to vaccination. For some pathogens, there is also the potential for interactions with childhood programmes in the form of herd-immunity effects.
authors.affiliation: Samuels Building, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
authors.forename: Sevan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dirmesropian
authors.affiliation: Samuels Building, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
authors.forename: James G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Wood
authors.affiliation: Samuels Building, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
authors.forename: C Raina
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: MacIntyre
authors.affiliation: Samuels Building, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.|Centre for Health Economics Research and Modelling Infectious Diseases (CHERMID) and Centre for the Evaluation of Vaccination (CEV), Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Beutels
authors.affiliation: Samuels Building, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia. a.newall@unsw.edu.au.
authors.forename: Anthony T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Newall
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D019049:Developed Countries; D006801:Humans; D032521:Immunity, Herd; D017589:Immunization Programs / Q000191:economics* / Q000458:organization & administration; D008875:Middle Aged; D013997:Time Factors; D014611:Vaccination / Q000191:economics* / Q000379:methods; D014612:Vaccines / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000191:economics
chemical_list: D014612:Vaccines