"Social Return On Investment“ for Child and Adolescence Health – Outcomes, Methods and Economic Parameters

Suggested by: Main Association of the Austrian Social Security Institutions 
Duration: April 2017 – November 2017
Publication: LBI-HTA Project report No. 95b: https://eprints.aihta.at/1142/

Language: English (with extensive summary and marginal notes in German)

Background:
The term „Social Impact Measurement” summarises several approaches measuring the effects of programs and interventions. An essential role in this prospect plays the concept of „Social Return On Investment (SROI)”.

SROI is a methodological framework to measure socio-economic implications of interventions. Thus, costs and benefits of an intervention are not just counted as a direct consequence, but are analysed in a broader context. Furthermore, the correlation between interventions and the effects on school or professional careers, on the development of (mental) burdens, plus the development of somatic comorbidities due to poverty or unemployment are evaluated. SROIs can be done retrospectively or prospectively. Thus, SROIs are especially useful in the field of child and adolescence health.

Moreover, early indication-specific interventions, respectively the quality of medical care for the course of diseases and the course of central areas of life (education, social security, autonomous life, etc.), can be effective. The strategic document of the Austrian health insurance refers also to possible social returns on investments that can occur due to early interventions for children and teenager.

Research questions:
Based on this background, the following research questions shall be answered:

• For which diseases and disorders of children and teenagers, studies of “Social Impact Measurement“ do exist? The main focus will be on SROIs.
  • Which outcomes can be identified?
  • Which costs are reported (e.g. direct / indirect) and in which areas are these costs manifested (health, education, etc.)?
  • What are the costs of the individual interventions/programs in the identified literature and what is the predicted return of investment?
• How is the benefit of the interventions in the respective analyses methodically justified? Are there hints which methods were used for choosing outcomes?
• Which explicit cases are reported in the identified literature?

Based on this:

• Which specific disorders and diseases of children and teenager are eligible for a further economic analysis (especially for Austria) in a future project report?

Project aims:

• This report is supposed to give a (systematic) overview of “Social Impact Measurement“ (especially SROI) in the field of child and adolescence health, these analyses should focus on:
  • Diseases and disorders,
  • Cost types and areas and
  • Methods that are used in the analyses.
• Explicit case, reported in the identified literature, will be taken up and analysed.
• Based on the results, 4 to 5 diseases or disorders shall be identified that are in particular eligible for a further SROI-Analysis for the Austrian context in a future project.

Methods:

• Scoping (December 2016 and March 2017);
• Systematic literature search in selected databases for “Social Impact Measurement”:
  • Initially search in EconLit;
  • After analysing search results adapting search strategy, if necessary, and expanding search on other databases, like PubMed, Medline, NHS EED etc.;
  • Additional hand search via Google und eventually Scopus.
• Summarising und processing of the literature by:
  • Diseases and disorders for children and teenager;
  • Outcomes (Cost types and areas of life);
  • Methodologic approaches.
• Uptake of possibly described cases.

Future prospects / possible projects for the future:

• Data based SROI-analysis for individual the Austrian context, based on the results of the current project.
• Assessment of developments for a long term horizon, based on “real” data.

Time Schedule / mile stones:

October 2016-March 2017: Scoping, project protocol
April-May 2017: Orientation and initial hand search
May 2017: systematic literature search in above-mentioned databases
June 2017: rough categorisation of the selected literature, literature ordering, deepened hand search
July-September 2017: summarising results of identified studies, writing report
October 2017: internal review, revision
November 2017: external review, revision, final editing