Health Technology Assessment and Public Health: Relation, Potentialities and Evidence Generation

Dear colleagues,

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) represent a threat to global health and socioeconomic development: NCDs, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease, are collectively responsible for almost 70% of all deaths worldwide (WHO, 2021), with a significant increase in the current COVID-19 era.

The sustainability of healthcare systems may be supported by investing more in health promotion, disease prevention, and early diagnosis rather than in disease treatment (Crisp et al., 2017). In this view, public health interventions (PHIs) have acquired a significant importance in NCDs management, with the institution of population-based interventions on health promotion or for the primary prevention of chronic or nonchronic diseases, thus developing personalized approaches that would place citizens at the core of healthcare systems (Ricciardi and Boccia, 2017). In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has yet again reinforced the need to ensure health and social equity. While hospitals and healthcare authorities globally are appropriately focusing their resources and efforts to contain the pandemic, there is a consistent concern that the shifting of health, social and economic priorities will have long-lasting detrimental effects on NCD risk, especially amongst the most vulnerable subjects (Chang et al., 2020).

Therefore, considering the importance of correctly assessing the impact of innovative healthcare strategies, it is relevant to directly involve health professionals, service providers, policymaking authorities, and governmental agencies to strive for healthy communities while ensuring social justice and equity.

According to the above, health technology assessment (HTA) plays a key role in evaluating the feasibility of public health interventions devoted to NCDs, as a multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional approach useful for deciding the efficient and equitable allocation of healthcare resources, by examining the relative value of interventions, to support and guide health policy decision making (Drummond et al., 2008; EUnetHTA, 2016).

Traditionally, the vast majority of HTAs have been concentrating on the assessment of drugs and medical devices. On the contrary, HTA on public health interventions is still a neglected area (Lavis et al., 2010; Stojanovic et al., 2020), thus requiring an in-depth analysis and a specific effort in evidence-based data generation.

Moving on from the aforementioned premises, the present Special Issue will try to cover the above knowledge gap, thus collecting HTA studies on public health topics, focusing on both methodological approaches and empirical studies conducted from real-life data, in the planning and evaluation of public health intervention, not only from an efficacy point of view, but providing a careful and in-depth analysis of organizational and economic impacts.

Scholars and practitioners are invited to share their latest research efforts about knowledge creation, exploration and exploitation in the healthcare sector, with respect to the role of HTA in supporting public health intervention planning, introduction, evaluation and decision.

As previously mentioned, this Special Issue welcomes conceptual, analytical, empirical or review research, conducted using qualitative and quantitative methods. The contributions may be focused (without being limited to) to different areas, considering (without being limited to) the following proposed topics.

• Models, techniques and methodological approaches for assessing PHI.
• The role of real-world data for creating PHI value.
• Organizational antecedents and consequences of real-world data, in terms of the production of new roles and competencies.
• The acceptability of PHI in promoting population health.
• Understanding barriers to assessing/reaching a decision on and implementing a PH intervention.
• The ability of real-world data to influence the communication process with patients, and population/citizen engagement.
• Effective or ineffective management of innovative PHI in healthcare.
• Investment strategies for healthcare organizations or healthcare companies.
• The importance of monitoring healthcare delivery in terms of accessibility and appropriateness.
• The evaluation of the performance of healthcare providers in terms of quality of care and value-for-money.
• The role of PHI in supporting the healthcare planning process.

Dr. Emanuela Foglia
Prof. Dr. Anna Odone
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• HTA
• health technology assessment
• NCDs
• chronic disease
• real-world data
• sustainability
• acceptability
• evidence-based information
• public health intervention
• public health program