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Dr Sarah Clark
ESRC Research Associate
University College London
School of Public Policy
The Rubin Building
29/30 Tavistock Square
London
WC1H 9QU
U.K.

Email s.l.clark@ucl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 1206 825916
Fax: +44 (0)20 7679 4969

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Social Values and Health Priority Setting

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Jointly led by UCL School of Public Policy, King's College London Medical School and NICE international and in collaboration with a host of international partners, our research project aims to compare the decisions made about resource allocation in health care by different countries, and to explore the differing social values that shape those choices. In the light of our analyses, we aim to develop a set of principles to guide policy makers in any country when facing the ‘values challenge’ of health care prioritisation.

Latest news

Social Values Project featured in health consultancy blog

Sam Littlejohns of MHP Communications, a consultancy firm working on health policy issues amongst others, has written a blog about the move towards including social value judgements in priority setting decisions, where previously cost-effectiveness dominated.  Sam suggests that 'Social value judgements could be poised to become all the rage'.  The article points to our project as the only initiative around currently to be tackling the issues. 

Social values and health priority setting in the media

We have had much interest in the project from the media over recent months, with several articles being published in the UK media and one in a Portuguese newspaper.

UCL and King's Summer School on Social Values and Clinical Commissioning

In September, UCL and King's hosted a two day summer school on Social Values and Clinical Commissioning in the UK, attended by health policy practitioners and researchers. Clinical commissioning groups in the UK will soon acquire responsibility for commissioning health services for their local populations, and when they do, they will face familiar problems in healthcare priority setting, including the tension between meeting need and maximising benefit, identifying exceptional cases and securing overall fairness. In addition, a new value-based pricing regime is due to come into effect for pharmaceuticals in the UK in 2014.

Health Technology Assessment international conference

Several lead members of the Social Values research network hosted a panel session at the Health Technology Assessment international conference 2012, in Bilbao on 25 June.

‘How can we set priorities in health fairly?’ UCL conference

UCL hosted a conference in February this year on the challenge of how to set priorities in health fairly, at which presentations were given by several UCL members of the social values network. Albert Weale presented on ‘Social Value for Money in Health Care’; Sarah Clark presented on ‘Interpreting Social Values in Health Care’; and Katharina Kieslich presented the case of ‘Priority Setting in Germany’.

About Us

All health care systems are facing the challenge of ensuring that high quality care is provided to the maximum number of people at a cost that the country can afford. This comes at a time when people are living longer, have increasing expectations of what care should be provided, and when the speed of health care innovation continues to offer ever greater options for intervention.

Because no country can afford to provide all its residents with every medical intervention regardless of cost or amount of clinical benefit, all political systems are facing the problem of how to set priorities in the allocation of health care resources. It has long been acknowledged in many countries that technical criteria such as cost and clinical effectiveness inform decisions about resource allocation.

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Page last modified on 10 sep 12 15:14