A proposal for a new social values research program and policy network

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the social values framework developed by Clark and Weale could be applied to publicly available data and to explore the concordance between the framework values and those present in the statements of decision-making protocols of Health Technology Assessment Agencies.

The web sites of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE); the All Wales Strategy Medicines Group; and the Scottish Medicines Consortium were searched for references to social value statements and assessed according to the social values framework.

The framework was easy to apply and demonstrated that it is possible to find statements of operational expression of a range of social values in the description of the decision protocols used by the public agencies. Most of the framework's values find some expression in the statements of the decision protocols, but there are differences. For example, the All Wales Group, when discussing clinical effectiveness, explicitly refers to an assessment via "pathways of care" in a way that neither of the other two do. The value of autonomy is explicitly mentioned by NICE but not by the other two, whereas the value of solidarity (a value most typically associated with European social insurance systems) finds only indirect expression in the guidance notes of all.

The paper provides further information that will be useful in revising the framework in preparation for its role in future data collection.

This is the initial step in developing a social values instrument that will support health policy decisions. While there are other check lists of social values, this is the first time that an approach to creating a framework is being tested empirically.