New paper calls for environmental impact to be considered in the evaluation of health interventions

The past decade has seen a growing commitment from health system leaders to build environmentally sustainable practices into the future of healthcare, and environmental impact is increasingly seen as an important consideration when assessing the value of new health interventions.

This has implications across the entire spectrum of decisions related to health interventions. To date, however, these discussions have been most prominent within the health technology assessment (HTA) community, with several HTA agencies already including environmental impact in their assessments.

Against this background, HPP worked with the Sustainable Healthcare Coalition to develop the discussion paper, Building environmental considerations into the evaluation of health interventions: taking a care pathway approach. The paper reflects on some key considerations and guiding principles that are important for all stakeholders to be mindful of as we try to chart the most feasible and appropriate route forward:

• Patient outcomes come first: Advancing environmental goals should never come at the expense of improving patient outcomes; the main lens through which we evaluate health interventions must always remain their benefits to people.
• Take a care pathway approach to measurement: Assessing the environmental impact of a given health intervention must take a comprehensive approach, looking at the context within which it is used and its impact over time.
• Protect innovation and patient access: We need to safeguard against unintended consequences where added requirements by HTA agencies could result in delays in the availability of health interventions for patients or discourage innovation.
• Ensure open communication and transparency among all stakeholders: Getting this right will take time and we need to adapt as we go along, guided by open, transparent discussion and collaboration among all stakeholders.
• Take a multi-stakeholder approach: HTA agencies and academia should work closely with industry, payer organisations, patient and carer organisations, and professional societies to build consistent and feasible methodologies, and evaluate their application in practice.

Read the discussion paper

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