Giving arguments to operationalize health capabilities in economic evaluations of health interventions

This article argues that health capabilities should be used to generate a measure of health-related quality of life so that health policy avoids expanding to encompass problems related to total well-being. To this end, health should be defined holistically, considering it as internal capabilities re...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of social and economic development 2018-10, Vol.20 (2), p.240-255
Main Author: Téllez Cabrera, Marco Ricardo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Economic Growth
Economic Policy
Economic Sociology
Economics
Economics and Finance
Health
Health care policy
Mental health
Organizational Studies
Quality of life
Research Paper
Social Policy
Valuation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article argues that health capabilities should be used to generate a measure of health-related quality of life so that health policy avoids expanding to encompass problems related to total well-being. To this end, health should be defined holistically, considering it as internal capabilities related to the physical, mental, and social domains. While different sets of health capabilities can be considered depending on their purpose, a synthesized set composed of health, health agency, material conditions and community dimensions incorporating this holistic definition of health together with external conditions is proposed. Valuation of this set for its use in large-scale projects should be done using worked or corrected preferences, elicited through public discussion and hybrid methods. Finally, a weighted sum ranking, social health-related capability functional together with a sufficientarian perspective, is proposed as a feasible method by which to aggregate individual health capabilities while taking into account concerns about efficiency and equity.
ISSN:0972-5792
2199-6873
DOI:10.1007/s40847-018-0069-z