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Vaccines
Special Issues
The Value(s) of Vaccination: Health Assessment
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The Value(s) of Vaccination: Health Assessment

A special issue of Vaccines (ISSN 2076-393X). This special issue belongs to the section "Human Vaccines and Public Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2023) | Viewed by 8020

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Giovanna Elisa Calabrò

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Campus di Roma, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
Interests: attitudes and beliefs on influenza vaccination; Health Technology Assessment (HTA); value-based healthcare; pharmaeconomic evaluations; public-health policies; epidemiology and prevention of infectious diseases; health promotion and health literacy
Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Bert

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Public Health, University of Turin, Via Santena 5 bis, 10126 Turin, Italy
Interests: public health; epidemiology; e-health; mental health; minority health
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

The benefits of vaccines are recognized globally. However, many challenges still need to be addressed to increase vaccination coverage and to ensure universal immunization.

Vaccinations are fundamental to the control of infectious diseases. In addition to reducing mortality and morbidity rates and limiting the spread of pathogens, vaccination plays an important role in the fight against antimicrobial resistance, and this represents an important value that is not yet fully captured. Vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs) have very important impacts not only on health systems but also on social care and productive and economic systems. Vaccination contributes to health systems’ sustainability through savings generated in terms of the reduction of hospitalizations, direct medical costs, and any short- and long-term complications related to potential outbreaks. It also reduces the lack of productivity due to absence from work and contributes to maintaining a healthy population.

Not recognizing and analyzing all the benefits of vaccines and vaccination, in terms of benefits at family, community and national level, these could be underestimated. The economic impact of vaccinations should incorporate health and non-health benefits of vaccination in both vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, thus allowing for the estimation of the net social value of vaccination. The full benefits of vaccination reach beyond the direct prevention of etiologically confirmed disease, and often extend across the life course of a vaccinated person, prevent outcomes in the wider community, stabilize health systems, promote health equity, and benefit local and national economies. Therefore, future economic evaluations should pay more attention to the effect of vaccination on preventing complications, on generating health gains for caregivers, and on community benefits beyond individual protection.

Hence, evidence-based tools to support vaccine-related decision-making processes (e.g., value-based healthcare (VBHC), HTA, new models for economic evaluations) are certainly needed.

Furthermore, an exploitation of the broad value of vaccines and vaccination could help contrasting several concerns, such as unequal access, lack of resources, and vaccine hesitancy.

The understanding of the broad value of vaccination and the effective translation of this knowledge to different stakeholders is therefore important to strengthen vaccination policies and strategies and counteract both disinformation and misinformation. 

We are pleased to invite you to submit an article to this Special Issue on The Value(s) of Vaccination: Health Assessment. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: (1) allocative value of vaccination; (2) technical value of vaccines; (3) personal value of vaccination; (4) societal value of vaccination; (5) actions and strategies for value-based decision-making on vaccination; (5) evidence-based tools to support the health technology assessment of vaccines; (6) new economic evaluation frameworks to assess the value of vaccines; (7) strategies to improve vaccine access and equality; (8) assessment and interventions to promote the full value of vaccination; and (9) the value(s) of vaccination for special populations including older adults, children, pregnant women, and healthcare workers. This Special Issue will include studies on COVID-19, routine vaccinations, experimental vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases. Original research articles and reviews are welcome.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Giovanna Elisa Calabrò
Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Bert
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • vaccine-preventable diseases
  • vaccination
  • vaccines
  • values of vaccination
  • value-based healthcare
  • HTA
  • economic evaluation
  • interventions and strategies
  • vaccine hesitancy
  • public health

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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12 pages, 1654 KiB  
Article
Vaccine-Preventable Hospitalisations from Seasonal Respiratory Diseases: What Is Their True Value?
by Margherita Neri, Simon Brassel, Hannah Schirrmacher, Diana Mendes, Andrew Vyse, Lotte Steuten and Elizabeth Hamson
Vaccines 2023, 11(5), 945; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11050945 - 04 May 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2149
Abstract
Hospitals in England experience extremely high levels of bed occupancy in the winter. In these circumstances, vaccine-preventable hospitalisations due to seasonal respiratory infections have a high cost because of the missed opportunity to treat other patients on the waiting list. This paper estimates [...] Read more.
Hospitals in England experience extremely high levels of bed occupancy in the winter. In these circumstances, vaccine-preventable hospitalisations due to seasonal respiratory infections have a high cost because of the missed opportunity to treat other patients on the waiting list. This paper estimates the number of hospitalisations that current vaccines against influenza, pneumococcal disease (PD), COVID-19, and a hypothetical Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine, could prevent in the winter among older adults in England. Their costs were quantified using a conventional reference costing method and a novel opportunity costing approach considering the net monetary benefit (NMB) obtained from alternative uses of the hospital beds freed-up by vaccines. The influenza, PD and RSV vaccines could collectively prevent 72,813 bed days and save over £45 million in hospitalisation costs. The COVID-19 vaccine could prevent over 2 million bed days and save £1.3 billion. However, the value of hospital beds freed up by vaccination is likely to be 1.1–2 times larger (£48–93 million for flu, PD and RSV; £1.4–2.8 billion for COVID-19) when quantified in opportunity cost terms. Considering opportunity costs is key to ensuring maximum value is obtained from preventative budgets, as reference costing may significantly underestimate the true value of vaccines. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Value(s) of Vaccination: Health Assessment)
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12 pages, 280 KiB  
Article
Assessing Doubts, Knowledge, and Service Appreciation among Pregnant Women Who Received the COVID-19 Vaccination in an Italian Research Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Study
by Stefania Bruno, Lorenza Nachira, Paola Arcaro, Fabio Pattavina, Enrica Campo, Chiara Cadeddu, Brigida Carducci, Antonio Lanzone, Gianfranco Damiani, Patrizia Laurenti and FPG COVID-19 Vaccination Team (FPG-CVT)
Vaccines 2023, 11(4), 812; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11040812 - 07 Apr 2023
Viewed by 1147
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is considered one of the deadliest pandemics in history. Pregnant women are more susceptible to developing serious diseases during COVID-19 than their non-pregnant peers. Pregnant women often express doubt about accepting the vaccination, especially in regard to their security and [...] Read more.
The COVID-19 pandemic is considered one of the deadliest pandemics in history. Pregnant women are more susceptible to developing serious diseases during COVID-19 than their non-pregnant peers. Pregnant women often express doubt about accepting the vaccination, especially in regard to their security and safety. This study aims to investigate the appreciation of the vaccination offer, and if there are any determinants impacting vaccine hesitancy. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of pregnant women who had just received their immunization against COVID-19 at the vaccination service of a teaching hospital in Rome, from October 2021 to March 2022. A high appreciation of the vaccination services was found, both for the logistic organization and the healthcare personnel, with mean scores above 4 out of 5. The degree of pre-vaccinal doubt was low (41%) or medium (48%) for the largest part of the sample, while the degree of COVID-19 vaccine knowledge was high for 91% of the participants. Physicians were the most decisive information source for the vaccination choice. Our results highlighted that a supportive approach could increase appreciation and improve the setting of vaccinations. Healthcare professionals should aim for a more comprehensive and integrated role of all figures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Value(s) of Vaccination: Health Assessment)
13 pages, 1763 KiB  
Article
Quantitative Benefit–Risk Assessment of COVID-19 Vaccines Using the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis
by Kyung-Hwa Son, Sun-Hong Kwon, Hye-Jung Na, Youngsuk Baek, Inok Kim and Eui-Kyung Lee
Vaccines 2022, 10(12), 2029; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10122029 - 27 Nov 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1945
Abstract
In the early SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, four major vaccines were approved despite limited efficacy and safety data through short regulatory review periods. Thus, it is necessary to assess the benefit-risk (BR) profiles of the COVID-19 vaccines. We conducted a quantitative BR assessment for [...] Read more.
In the early SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, four major vaccines were approved despite limited efficacy and safety data through short regulatory review periods. Thus, it is necessary to assess the benefit-risk (BR) profiles of the COVID-19 vaccines. We conducted a quantitative BR assessment for four COVID-19 vaccines (mRNA-based: mRNA-1273 and BNT162b2; viral vector-based: Ad26.COV.2 and ChAdOx1-S) using multi-criteria decision analysis. Three benefit criteria and two risk criteria were considered: preventing COVID-19 infection for (1) adults aged ≥18 years; (2) seniors aged 60 years or older; and (3) severe COVID-19, adverse events (AEs), and serious AEs. Data were retrieved from clinical trials, observational studies, and county-specific AE monitoring reports. Based on the collected data, vaccines were scored for each criterion. 22 professionals weighted each criterion. The overall BR score was calculated using scores and weights. mRNA-1273 was the most preferred vaccine in pre-authorization and BNT162b2 in post-authorization. We found that the mRNA vaccine had a good balance between the benefits and risks. Using this BR assessment, the benefit-risk profile of COVID-19 vaccines can be updated with cumulated data. It will contribute to building evidence for decision making by policy makers and health professionals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Value(s) of Vaccination: Health Assessment)
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Review

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21 pages, 670 KiB  
Review
Influenza Vaccination Assessment according to a Value-Based Health Care Approach
by Giovanna Elisa Calabrò, Floriana D’Ambrosio, Elettra Fallani and Walter Ricciardi
Vaccines 2022, 10(10), 1675; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10101675 - 08 Oct 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1708
Abstract
Background: Seasonal influenza has a considerable public health impact, and vaccination is the key to preventing its consequences. Our aim was to describe how the value of influenza vaccination is addressed in the scientific literature considering a new value framework based on four [...] Read more.
Background: Seasonal influenza has a considerable public health impact, and vaccination is the key to preventing its consequences. Our aim was to describe how the value of influenza vaccination is addressed in the scientific literature considering a new value framework based on four pillars (personal, allocative, technical, and societal value). Methods: A systematic review was conducted by querying three databases. The analysis was performed on international studies focused on influenza vaccination value, and the four value pillars were taken into consideration for their description. Results: Overall, 40 studies were considered. Most of them focused on influenza vaccination in the general population (27.5%), emphasizing its value for all age groups. Most studies addressed technical value (70.4%), especially in terms of economic models and cost drivers to be considered for the economic evaluations of influenza vaccines, and societal value (63%), whereas few dealt with personal (37%) and allocative values (22.2%). Conclusions: The whole value of influenza vaccination is still not completely recognized. Knowledge and communication of the whole value of influenza vaccination is essential to guide value-based health policies. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to implement initiatives that involve all relevant stakeholders. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Value(s) of Vaccination: Health Assessment)
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