Assignment Topic
The Department of Health (DoH) is considering funding a new intervention for helping younger adolescents (aged 12-15) with self-reported poor sleep, improve their sleep. Inadequate sleep at night in this age group has been shown to be associated with many poor outcomes including reduce capacity to learn (hence poorer grades), behavioural problems and lowered mood. This program is called "Sleeping Well" - a behaviourally based sleep intervention that provides parents with skills to help improve sleep outcomes for their adolescent as well as providing adolescents with strategies to help improve their sleep. Parent(s) and the adolescent will be seen for two x 50 minute consultations conducted two weeks apart, followed by a telephone call two weeks after the second session. The intervention will be delivered by study-employed adolescent psychologists. Session One will focus on an assessment of the adolescent's sleep problems, providing information about normal sleep and sleep cycles, sleep hygiene, and a tailored plan specific to the sleep diagnosis of the adolescent. Session Two will be held two weeks later to reinforce strategies, trouble shoot and monitor progress. Clinicians will then telephone families two weeks after the second visit to reinforce strategies, trouble shoot and monitor progress.
The DoH wants to know whether there is evidence that "Sleeping Well" represents "value for money". You have been asked to design a protocol for an economic evaluation alongside a randomised controlled trial of this intervention. Screening to detect eligible participants will include a short questionnaire administered at school. Your role in the team is to answer the following questions:
Question 1
Justify why you believe that an economic evaluation is needed, including any additional information you might need to support your argument.
Question 2
Form a well-defined study question to help guide your economic evaluation? Make sure you include all the elements of a good study question, including how health outcomes will be measured.
Question 3
What type of economic evaluation do you think will be the most appropriate for answering your study question? Justify why you have chosen this method for your economic evaluation.
NB: Don't forget to include justification based on your chosen health outcomes in your answer.
Question 4
Identify the resources that you will collect under the categories C1, C2, C3 and C4 (Described in Chapter 3, 46- page 47 in your text book):
Question 5
Outline the information and data sources that you would use for collecting the resource and cost information for your economic evaluation (focus on the measurement task of costing here).
Question 6:
Explain how you will value each of your resource inputs in your economic evaluation.
Question 7:
Explain and justify how you will collect and value the health outcomes you have chosen for your economic evaluation.
NOTE:
Please note that this is a hypothetical evaluation and intervention. You may search the literature to see if there are any published papers on similar interventions to guide your answer, but you should treat the exercise as though have been asked to design an economic evaluation alongside a randomised clinical trial.
You are expected to reference appropriate resources that you will use in your protocol, for example source of cost estimates for different types of resources, tools for measuring outcomes, etc.