This paper addresses the following questions: Should a proposed injury control intervention, whether preventive, clinical, or rehabilitative, be subjected to an "economic evaluation" to inform the decision about whether the intervention is implemented? If so, what kind of economic evaluation should be performed? There is a range of answers to these questions and thus the purpose of this paper is to describe some of the major alternative perspectives. An "economic evaluation" is defined in a leading textbook as "a comparative analysis of alternative courses of action in terms of both their costs and consequences" (Drummondet et al., 1997). The key word is "comparative" because any particular injury control measure may look good or bad depending upon what it is compared to. From a technical perspective, there are four types of economic evaluation: cost-minimization analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis, and cost-benefit analysis. Recent progress in measuring the burden of injury has been particularly useful in enhancing the feasibility of cost-utility and cost-benefit studies of injury control interventions.
Abstract