Health Care Policy

Commission Members

Aims

• Review existing methods and data sources used to assess treatment gap and performance of health systems for people with epilepsy.
• Develop a practical framework for standardized assessments of the health burden and health system performance for people with epilepsy.
• Demonstrate the applicability of the framework in several countries.
• Present initial country studies at 25th IEC Symposium in Lisbon.
• Present template and final country studies at 26th IEC Symposium in Paris.
• Prepare papers and Commission Report covering the methods and country applications.

Achievements prior to July 2003

• Conducted preliminary country studies of healthcare systems for people with epilepsy in Canada, France, Italy, South Africa, UK, and the USA.
• Reviewed frameworks used by others to assess treatment gap and make international comparisons of health systems for people with epilepsy.
• Presented findings at 25th IEC Parallel Session in Lisbon.
• Reviewed literature and consulted experts on the World Health Organization’s Health System Performance Assessment framework.
• Examined the applicability of the World Health Organization’s methods for estimating epilepsy-related health burden, health service responsiveness, and health service fairness in financing.

Commission Activities
July 31, 2003 to June 30, 2004

• Held telephone conference calls in December, February, and March to discuss the WHO framework.
• Contacted WHO experts to assist the Commission in learning about and applying the WHO framework to epilepsy.
• Determined appropriateness of the WHO Health Systems Performance Assessment framework for assessing epilepsy-related healthcare burden and system performance across countries.
• Presented results of the evaluation of the WHO approach and its implications for epilepsy at a Commission meeting at the 9th ECE in Vienna.

Upcoming Activities

Working with WHO expert:
Obtain WHO country-specific epilepsy-related DALYs, YLLs, and YLDs for latest year available.

Reestimate epilepsy-related DALYs, YLLs, and YLDs for each country using the WHO spreadsheet method and the best data available.

Obtain the WHO Fairness in Financing Contribution (FFC) for each country for the latest year available.

Obtain data and estimate revised epilepsy-related financing contribution measure for each country for a specified year.

Select WHO responsiveness questions for determining the responsiveness of epilepsy-related healthcare services in each country.

Pilot the responsiveness questions with selected patients.

Develop proposal for Future Tasks of the Commission.

Prepare papers and Commission Report covering the methods and country applications.

Chuck Begley
Chair