Cost analysis in health promotion, disease prevention and controlling program in Asia: A systematic review

Abstract

© Faculty of Pharmacy, Mahidol University (Thailand) 2019. Some health problems have been a global burden, the top ranks are ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease that are non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Many countries have tried to prevent from getting worse and more costly. Health promotion, disease prevention and control programs have been implemented, but the budget allocation seems to be not enough. Evidence of empirical costing studies may help on decision of more investment. PubMed were searched for published costing studies in health promotion, disease prevention and control program in Asia, without using any time limitation. Some searching terms and features in PubMed were used as search terms. Costing methods were explored and analyzed by descriptive statistics. This systematic review provided information about the situation in costing analysis studies of health promotion, disease prevention and controlling program that had been done in some countries in Asia. This study is expected to be helpful to develop costing methods or other costing analysis studies in health promotion and prevention program. It is found that the common activity is institutional routine program, and the costing method is micro-costing approach, using provider perspective. Some factors that may affect the development of costing analysis study were, for instance, the health problem of each country, the availability of financial support, and the availability of researcher or facility. Many improvement steps should be implemented to improve the quantity and the quality of costing analysis study in Asia.