Weighting of Criteria for Disease Prioritization Using Conjoint Analysis and Based on Health Professional and Student Opinion

Stebler, Nadine; Schüpbach, Gertraud; Braam, Peter; Falzon, Laura Cristina (2016). Weighting of Criteria for Disease Prioritization Using Conjoint Analysis and Based on Health Professional and Student Opinion. PLoS ONE, 11(3), e0151394. Public Library of Science 10.1371/journal.pone.0151394

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Disease prioritization exercises have been used by several organizations to inform surveillance and control measures. Though most methodologies for disease prioritization are based on expert opinion, it is becoming more common to include different stakeholders in the prioritization exercise. This study was performed to compare the weighting of disease criteria, and the consequent prioritization of zoonoses, by both health professionals and students in Switzerland using a Conjoint Analysis questionnaire. The health professionals comprised public health and food safety experts, cantonal physicians and cantonal veterinarians, while the student group comprised first-year veterinary and agronomy students. Eight criteria were selected for this prioritization based on expert elicitation and literature review. These criteria, described on a 3-tiered scale, were evaluated through a choice-based Conjoint Analysis questionnaire with 25 choice tasks. Questionnaire results were analyzed to obtain importance scores (for each criterion) and mean utility values (for each criterion level), and the latter were then used to rank 16 zoonoses. While the most important criterion for both groups was "Severity of the disease in humans", the second ranked criteria by the health professionals and students were "Economy" and "Treatment in humans", respectively. Regarding the criterion "Control and Prevention", health professionals tended to prioritize a disease when the control and preventive measures were described to be 95% effective, while students prioritized a disease if there were almost no control and preventive measures available. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy was the top-ranked disease by both groups. Health professionals and students agreed on the weighting of certain criteria such as "Severity" and "Treatment of disease in humans", but disagreed on others such as "Economy" or "Control and Prevention". Nonetheless, the overall disease ranking lists were similar, and these may be taken into consideration when making future decisions regarding resource allocation for disease control and prevention in Switzerland.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

05 Veterinary Medicine > Research Foci > Veterinary Public Health / Herd Health Management
05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Research and Veterinary Public Health (DCR-VPH) > Veterinary Public Health Institute
05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Research and Veterinary Public Health (DCR-VPH)

UniBE Contributor:

Stebler, Nadine, Schüpbach-Regula, Gertraud Irene, Falzon, Laura Cristina

Subjects:

600 Technology > 630 Agriculture

ISSN:

1932-6203

Publisher:

Public Library of Science

Language:

English

Submitter:

Susanne Agnes Lerch

Date Deposited:

06 Jul 2017 07:55

Last Modified:

02 Mar 2023 23:29

Publisher DOI:

10.1371/journal.pone.0151394

PubMed ID:

26967655

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.96192

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/96192

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