Inclusion of non-medical interventions in model-based economic evaluations for tuberculosis: A scoping review

The economic evaluation of health interventions is important in priority setting. Several guidance documents exist to support the conduct of economic evaluations, however, there is limited guidance for the evaluation of non-medical interventions. For tuberculosis (TB), where equity-deserving groups are disproportionately impacted, assessing interventions aimed at addressing social risk factors is necessary to effectively reduce TB burden.

This scoping review seeks to assess the existing literature on model-based economic evaluations of TB interventions to gauge the extent to which non-medical interventions have been evaluated in low-TB-incidence jurisdictions. As a secondary objective, this review aims to characterize key features of existing economic evaluations of medical and non-medical interventions.

A literature search was conducted in the grey literature and MEDLINE, Embase, EconLit, and PsychINFO databases to September 6, 2022 following the Arksey and O'Malley framework. Eligible articles were those that used decision-analytic modeling for economic evaluation of TB interventions in low-TB-incidence jurisdictions.

This review identified 127 studies that met the inclusion criteria; 11 focused on prevention, 73 on detection, and 43 on treatment of TB. Only three studies (2%) evaluated non-medical interventions, including smoking reduction strategies, improving housing conditions, and providing food vouchers. All three non-medical intervention evaluations incorporated TB transmission and robust uncertainty analysis into the evaluation. The remainder of the studies evaluated direct medical interventions, eight of which were focused on specific implementation components (e.g., video observed therapy) which shared similar methodological challenges as the non-medical interventions. The majority of remaining evaluated medical interventions were focused on comparing various screening programs (e.g., immigrant screening program) and treatment regimens.

This scoping review identified a gap in literature in the evaluation of non-medical TB interventions. However, the identified articles provided useful examples of how economic modeling can be used to explore non-traditional interventions using existing economic evaluation methods.