Immunization decision-making capacity building in low- and middle-income countries through teaching vaccine economics everywhere: A program evaluation

Authors

Tania Banerjee, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Shreena Malaviya, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Yira Natalia Alfonso, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Patrick Wedlock, HERMES Logistics Modeling Team, Baltimore, MD, USA.
George Pariy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Omrana Pasha, Aga Khan UniversityFollow
Dagna Constenla, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Shehla Zaidi, Aga Khan UniversityFollow
Maryam Huda, Aga Khan UniversityFollow
Farina Abrejo, Aga Khan UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Department

Community Health Sciences

Abstract

Background: National immunization program staff have limited prior training in economics, despite a need to make difficult economic choices in financing and operating their programs. Teaching Vaccine Economics Everywhere (TVEE) is an international consortium of 4 universities that provides vaccine economics and financing training to mid-career immunization program managers and policy-makers in low- and middle-income countries. Since 2017, TVEE has provided short training workshops at four regional hubs using a curriculum developed using real data and scenarios tailored to region-specific needs. The study aims to evaluate program impact of the first 2 years.
Methods: The impact of the program was evaluated based on the Kirkpatrick Model. The survey was developed and distributed using Qualtrics to all participants from all regional hubs for whom contact information was available. Surveys were completed online anonymously and responses were grouped by regional hubs. Familiar local leaders sent multiple reminder to improve response rates. The final analysis of data collected was conducted in Microsoft Excel and Qualtrics.
Results: All respondents indicated that were vaccine program costing and efficiency (69%) and economic evaluation (63%) were areas with the highest demand for skill-building. Findings show an improvement in knowledge of at least 1 point on a 4-point scale was observed for 59% respondents for cost analysis, 55% for cost effectiveness analysis, 56% for benefit incidence analysis and 56% for program efficiency analysis. After their training, 72% of respondents indicated having opportunities to apply their skills at work and 81% indicated acceptance of the new methods by their supervisor/team.
Conclusion: The results indicate that TVEE had a positive impact in the capacity building of mid-career immunization professionals who found it to be important and necessary in their work. With these results, TVEE will modify the pedagogy to teach theory using practical case-studies and offer hands-on training opportunities.

Comments

Pagination are not provided by the author/publisher

Publication (Name of Journal)

Journal of Global Health Science

Recommended Citation

Banerjee, T., Malaviya, S., Alfonso, Y. N., Wedlock, P., Pariy, G., Pasha, O., Constenla, D., Zaidi, S., Huda, M., Abrejo, F. (2019). Immunization decision-making capacity building in low- and middle-income countries through teaching vaccine economics everywhere: A program evaluation. Journal of Global Health Science, 1(2), e48.
Available at: https://ecommons.aku.edu/pakistan_fhs_mc_chs_chs/731