This book evaluates the effectiveness of prenatal care interventions and provides a framework for prenatal care that looks beyond the limited perspective of immediate neonatal outcomes. Ultimately, this book seeks to improve the content and the implementation of prenatal care by shifting the focus away from short-term technocentric medical advances to concentrate on the broader public health issues. A unique aspect of this book is its focus on the effectiveness of prenatal care interventions on longer-term benefits for women and children's health. Traditional medical interventions, as well as social support and behavioral interventions during prenatal care are reviewed. Effectiveness is considered within the context of its implications for public policy and service delivery. This book is an important resource for maternal and child health professionals, policy makers and health care managers because it provides evidence of the prenatal care services that improve the long-term health of women and children.

A COMPLETE UPDATE AND REVISION OF THE CLASSIC TEXT "At last, a manual of operations for comparing the cost-effectiveness of a preventive service with a treatment intervention." -American Journal of Preventive Medicine Twenty years after the first edition of COST-EFFECTIVENESS IN HEALTH AND MEDICINE established the practical benchmark for cost-effectiveness analysis, this completely revised edition of the classic text provides an essential resource to a new generation of practitioners, students, researchers, and policymakers. Produced by the Second Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine-a team of 13 experts from fields including decision science, economics, ethics, psychology, and medicine-this new edition is a comprehensive guide to the use of cost-effectiveness analysis as an evaluative tool at the institutional and policy levels. As health care systems face increasing pressure to derive maximum value from expenditures, the guidelines in this new text represent not just the best information available, but a vital guide to health care decision-making in a challenging new era. Completely revised and enriched with examples and expanded coverage, this second edition of COST-EFFECTIVENESS IN HEALTH AND MEDICINE builds on its predecessor's excellence, offering required reading for both analysts and decision makers.

This is a unique, in-depth discussion of the uses and conduct of cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA) as decision-making aids in the health and medical fields. The product of over two years of deiberation by a multi-disciplinary Public Health Service appointed panel that included economists, ethicists, psychometricians, and clinicians, it explores cost-effectiveness in the context of societal decision-making for resource allocation purposes. It proposes that analysts include a "reference-case" analysis in all CEA's designed to inform resource allocation and puts forth the most expicit set of guidelines (together with their rationale) ever outlined of the conduct of CEAs. Important theoretical and practical issues encountered in measuring costs and effectiveness, valuing outcomes, discounting, and dealing with uncertainty are examined in separate chapters. These discussions are complemented by additional chapters on framing and reporting of CEAs that aim to clarify the purpose of the analysis and the effective communication of its findings. Primarily intended for analysts in medicine and public health who wish to improve practice and comparability of CEAs, this book will also be of interest to decision-makers in government, managed care, and industry who wish to consider the roles and limitations of CEA and become familiar with criteria for evaluating these studies.