BACKGROUND

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) provides the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) with ongoing and timely medical, scientific, and public health advice relating to immunization.

Traditionally, NACI reviewed safety, efficacy, immunogenicity, effectiveness and burden of illness in making recommendations for vaccine programs. PHAC has now expanded the NACI mandate to include the systematic consideration of programmatic factors – economics, ethics, equity, feasibility and vaccine acceptability-in developing evidence-based recommendations. The aim of this expanded mandate is to facilitate timely decision-making for publicly funded vaccine programs at provincial and territorial levels.

NACI Economic Process

NACI has developed a draft process for determining when and how they should incorporate economic evidence into recommendations (The NACI Economic Process). The process was developed using information from Canadian and international health technology assessment agencies, the vaccine industry and immunization advisory groups in other countries.  NACI is now seeking input on this draft Economic Process from interested stakeholders.

The proposed Economic Process consists of three basic steps:

• Assessing if economic evidence is required for NACI to make a vaccine recommendation;
• Determining the approach for generating economic evidence, if such an evaluation is deemed necessary;
• Evidence synthesis and development of an NACI guidance.

Proposed options for generating economic evidence include a systematic literature review which may be combined with a de novo (i.e., purpose built) or adapted model-based evaluation or a multi-model comparison. Discussions around budget impact analyses are not part of this initial consultation but may be revisited at a later date.

On the NACI webpage, a downloadable PDF of the Economic Process and other supporting tools can be located. The questionnaire addresses each section of the Economic Process and poses key questions for stakeholder feedback. All feedback received will be considered by the NACI Secretariat in their final review of the Economic Process before it is tabled for final approval by NACI and made publicly available.

All feedback is due by May 10, 2021 at 11:59PM EST.  

If you have any questions related to this consultation, please contact the NACI Secretariat at phac.naci-ccni.aspc@canada.ca.

To learn more about PDCI offerings and how we can support your reimbursement and policy needs, please contact John-Paul Dowson, Director, Strategic Consulting & Policy Research at PDCI Market Access.