Work Package 3 (WP3) is tasked with the development of strategies for the economic assessment of infectious diseases prevention in ageing adults at country level in Europe. To reach this goal, WP3 focuses on two important aspects:

  1. the assessment of the (broad) economic value of present and new preventative interventions;
  2. the evaluation of implementation of the (new) preventative interventions into a country’s specific health care system.

The modelling program, which will be developed in 2021, has three specific objectives:

  1. To develop a CORE model construct that is able to answer all the questions we have from a perspective of the older adults population as a whole;
  2. To construct a catalogue program of different models that answer the economic questions now separately using a specific model type per infection, infection group, and country. It allows to search for more specific answers as compared with the previous model;
  3. To assess a scoring system of countries to evaluate their prevention strategy program as developed and implemented today for aging adults. The scoring system integrates the information obtained from the previous two objectives and will highlight the effort to be done to get to an acceptable level of infection control, and measure the benefit in getting to a higher level related to healthy ageing.

Over the last period multiple meetings have been organized internally, with WP1 for data sharing, and with the separate working groups related to the specific objectives as described above.

CORE and Catalogue model update
The models are currently under development with a test-case of influenza for the CORE model, and placeholders for model input, replaced with expected future data available from WP1.

Scoring system 
To reach synergy between preventive strategies and the context specific implementation, a country score tool will be developed. The tool can aid in the assessment and prioritization of infectious disease prevention in older adults and clarify the importance of disease prevention in older adults. The team has conducted a scoping review to explore country assessment framework of immunization programs for the elderly. Retrieved articles show a diversity of assessments among countries.

Given the significant differences in vaccination programs for adults in Europe, the team will use a conceptual framework to provide a complete set of crucial domains for a successful vaccine introduction, tailored-suggestions for actions needed and corresponding guidelines for these actions. The different domains for the frameworks vary among retrieved articles and guidelines. There is a special need to define them for a transparent framework. These outcomes have been discussed in a VITAL stakeholder consultation meeting on the 24th of June.