Mar. 8, 2007 Many important health policy issues, such as the
allocation of avian flu vaccine in a pandemic or mandatory HPV
vaccinations for young women, require policy makers to decide
healthcare priorities for different age groups. Yet economic
methods used to allocate health care dollars and other resources
may substantially undervalue childhood interventions, a new
University of Michigan study suggests. This undervaluation
occurs despite evidence that people place as much as three times
greater value on health gains for children and adolescents,
relative to adults or seniors. University of Michigan's Daniel
Eisenberg, assistant professor in the School of Public Health,
and Dr. Gary Freed, director of the Child Health Evaluation and
Research Unit in the Division of General Pediatrics, reviewed a
series of separate survey studies that show society favors early
childhood intervention. However, despite studies that suggest,
that a year of life added for a 15-year old should receive 2 to
3 times more weight t