Home > Economic evaluation of five tobacco control policies across seven European countries.

Leão, Teresa and Perelman, Julian and Clancy, Luke and Mlinarić, Martin and Kinnunen, Jaana M and Nuyts, Paulien A W and Mélard, Nora and Rimpelä, Arja and Lorant, Vincent and Kunst, Anton E (2020) Economic evaluation of five tobacco control policies across seven European countries. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 22, (7), pp. 1202-1209. doi: 10.1093/ntr/ntz124.

External website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC72917...

INTRODUCTION: Economic evaluations of tobacco control policies targeting adolescents are scarce. Few take into account real-world, large-scale implementation costs; few compare cost-effectiveness of different policies across different countries. We assessed the cost-effectiveness of five tobacco control policies (nonschool bans, including bans on sales to minors, bans on smoking in public places, bans on advertising at points-of-sale, school smoke-free bans, and school education programs), implemented in 2016 in Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Portugal.

METHODS: Cost-effectiveness estimates were calculated per country and per policy, from the State perspective. Costs were collected by combining quantitative questionnaires with semi-structured interviews on how policies were implemented in each setting, in real practice. Short-term effectiveness was based on the literature, and long-term effectiveness was modeled using the DYNAMO-HIA tool. Discount rates of 3.5% were used for costs and effectiveness. Sensitivity analyses considered 1%-50% short-term effectiveness estimates, highest cost estimates, and undiscounted effectiveness.

FINDINGS: Nonschool bans cost up to €253.23 per healthy life year, school smoking bans up to €91.87 per healthy life year, and school education programs up to €481.35 per healthy life year. Cost-effectiveness depended on the costs of implementation, short-term effectiveness, initial smoking rates, dimension of the target population, and weight of smoking in overall mortality and morbidity.

CONCLUSIONS: All five policies were highly cost-effective in all countries according to the World Health Organization thresholds for public health interventions. Cost-effectiveness was preserved even when using the highest costs and most conservative effectiveness estimates.

IMPLICATIONS: Economic evaluations using real-world data on tobacco control policies implemented at a large scale are scarce, especially considering nonschool bans targeting adolescents. We assessed the cost-effectiveness of five tobacco control policies implemented in 2016 in Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Portugal. This study shows that all five policies were highly cost-effective considering the World Health Organization threshold, even when considering the highest costs and most conservative effectiveness estimates.


Item Type
Article
Publication Type
Irish-related, International, Open Access, Article
Drug Type
Tobacco / Nicotine
Intervention Type
Policy
Date
12 June 2020
Identification #
doi: 10.1093/ntr/ntz124
Page Range
pp. 1202-1209
Volume
22
Number
7
EndNote

Repository Staff Only: item control page