Healthcare preferences
We study how societal values and health preferences influence the fair and effective allocation of healthcare resources during infectious disease outbreaks.
Healthcare decisions during infectious disease outbreaks involve more than epidemiological forecasts—they must also consider how resources are valued, distributed, and experienced across diverse populations. At SIMID, we investigate health care preferences and health utility measures to inform equitable and effective public health strategies.
We examine how factors like age, comorbidity, public attitudes, and population ageing influence the perceived value and prioritization of interventions. Our work explores how tools such as quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) can be integrated into epidemiological models to assess policy options.
In Belgium, we evaluated the impact of using QALYs (quality-adjusted life years) to compare age-targeted COVID-19 vaccine rollouts during a period of evolving variants, demonstrating how value-based metrics influence mitigation strategy assessments (Willem et al., 2024). We also studied how ageing populations may alter the transmission dynamics and health burden of future respiratory outbreaks (Mogelmose et al., 2023).
Our broader work includes cross-country analyses of life expectancy and DALY trends in OECD nations (Varbanova et al., 2023) and public attitudes toward COVID-19 testing, isolation, and boosters (De Meijere et al., 2023). We also review and compare health utility values and instruments for evaluating quality of life during and after COVID-19 illness (Mao et al., 2023; Elsevier, 2024).
Beyond COVID-19, we model intervention acceptability and uptake, such as in HIV prevention in vulnerable communities (Kremer et al., 2023).
By combining epidemiological analysis with preference-sensitive measures, SIMID supports decision-making that reflects both health outcomes and societal values.