Prioritizing government funding of adolescent vaccinations: recommendations from young people on a citizens’ jury

Abstract

ObjectiveAdolescents’ views, and preferences are often over-looked when public health policies that affect them are designed and implemented. The purpose of this study was to describe young people's views and preferences for determining government funding priorities for adolescent immunization programs. MethodsIn 2015 we conducted a youth jury in metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia to deliberate on the question “What criteria should we use to decide which vaccines for young people in Australia should receive public funding?” Fifteen youth aged 15–19 years participated in the jury. Jury members were recruited from the general community through a market research company using a stratified sampling technique. ResultsThe jury's key priorities for determining publically funded vaccines were:Disease severity – whether the vaccine preventable disease (VPD) was life threatening and impacted on quality of life.Transmissibility – VPDs with high/fast transmission and high prevalence.Demonstration of cost-effectiveness, taking into account purchase price, program administration, economic and societal gain.The jury's recommendations for vaccine funding policy were strongly underpinned by the belief that it was critical to ensure that funding was targeted to not only population groups who would be medically at risk from vaccine preventable diseases, but also to socially and economically disadvantaged population groups. A novel recommendation proposed by the jury was that there should be a process for establishing criteria to remove vaccines from publically funded programs as a complement to the process for adding new vaccines. ConclusionsYoung people have valuable contributions to make in priority setting for health programs and their views should be incorporated into the framing of health policies that directly affect them.