Abstract
BackgroundThe rapid decrease in international funding for HIV/AIDS has been challenging for many nations to effectively mobilize and allocate their limited resources for HIV/AIDS programs. Economic evaluations can help inform decisions and strategic planning. This study aims to examine the trends and patterns in economic evaluation studies in the field of HIV/AIDS and determine their research landscapes.MethodsUsing the Web of Science databases, we synthesized the number of papers and citations on HIV/AIDS and economic evaluation from 1990 to 2017. Collaborations between authors and countries, networks of keywords and research topics were visualized using frequency of co-occurrence and Jaccards’ similarity index. A Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) analysis to categorize papers into different topics/themes.ResultsA total of 372 economic evaluation papers were selected, including 351 cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA), 11 cost-utility analyses (CUA), 12 cost-benefit analyses (CBA). The growth of publications, their citations and usages have increased remarkably over the years. Major research topics in economic evaluation studies consisted of antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation and treatment; drug use prevention interventions and prevention of mother-to-child transmission interventions. Moreover, lack of contextualized evidence was found in specific settings with high burden HIV epidemics, as well as emerging most-at-risk populations such as trans-genders or migrants.ConclusionThis study highlights the knowledge and geographical discrepancies in HIV/AIDS economic evaluation literature. Future research directions are also informed for advancing economic evaluation in HIV/AIDS research.
Highlights
The rapid decrease in international funding for HIV/AIDS has been challenging for many nations to effectively mobilize and allocate their limited resources for HIV/AIDS programs
The first form measures natural units of effects, while the second form evaluates the outcomes in monetary terms, and the third form assesses the effectiveness in terms of Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) or Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) [9,10,11]
Among 250,270 papers about HIV/AIDS, 372 papers are about economic evaluations in HIV/AIDS
Summary
The rapid decrease in international funding for HIV/AIDS has been challenging for many nations to effectively mobilize and allocate their limited resources for HIV/AIDS programs. This study aims to examine the trends and patterns in economic evaluation studies in the field of HIV/AIDS and determine their research landscapes. Economic evaluations can support this decision-making process by systematically quantifying and comparing the costs and outcomes of different interventions or health programs. There are three primary forms of economic evaluation: cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA), cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and cost-utility analysis (CUA) [9]. They are distinguished by the measure of outcomes. The rapid development of economic evaluation studies in this field requires a further assessment to understand the knowledge gap and propose future research directions
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