Wanrudee Isaranuwatchai
1,2,3, Ryan Li
4, Amanda Glassman
5, Yot Teerawattananon
1, Anthony J. Culye
6, Kalipso Chalkidou
4,5*1 Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program, Ministry of Public Health, Nonthaburi, Thailand.
2 Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
3 Centre for Excellence in Economic Analysis Research, St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada.
4 School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK.
5 Center for Global Development, London, UK.
6 Department of Economics and Related Studies and Centre for Health Economics, University of York, York, UK.
Abstract
The Disease Control Priorities program (DCP) has pioneered the use of economic evidence in health. The
theory of change (ToC) put forward by Norheim is a further welcome and necessary step towards translating
DCP evidence into better priority setting in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We also agree that
institutionalising evidence for informed priority-setting processes is crucial. Unfortunately, there have been
missed opportunities for the DCP program to challenge ill-judged global norms about opportunity costs and too
little respect has been shown for the wider set of local circumstances that may enable, or disable, the productive
application of the DCP evidence base. We suggest that the best way forward for the global health community is
a new platform that integrates the many existing development initiatives and that is driven by countries’ asks.