Priority setting for environmentally sustainable health care
Emerging approaches to fair resource allocation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13123723 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anand Bhopal (0000-0002-2766-8102, corresponding author), Martin Hensher (0000-0001-6444-6827, University of Tasmania), A MacNeill (University of British Columbia), Andrea J MacNeill (0000-0001-6836-0000), Ole F Norheim (0000-0002-5748-5956), Jodi D Sherman (0000-0003-4157-9728), Jodi Sherman, Craig Mitton (0000-0001-7871-8977, Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 12 |
| Pages | 101391-101391 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Lancet Planetary Health (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2542-5196 • E-ISSN: 2542-5196 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.lanplh.2025.101391 |
| PMID | 41453379 |
| OpenAlex | W7117148091 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 60 |
Priority setting in health care is a research and practice area at the intersection of medicine, ethics, and economics, which aims to systematically and transparently evaluate the value for money of health services to support fair resource allocation. Three widely accepted principles for fair priority setting are cost-effectiveness, priority to the worse off, and financial risk protection, with a wide range of other contested criteria. Conceptualising and navigating potential synergies and trade-offs between competing goals, and clearly communicating the values at stake, are the central tasks of priority setting. It is now increasingly clear that health care systems have substantial environmental effects that have been largely overlooked, and that the growing movement towards high-quality, low-polluting, and climate-resilient health systems has potentially far-reaching implications for resource allocation. This Personal View explores how priority setting tools can facilitate the transition to environmentally sustainable health care. We outline the key principles of priority setting in health care and explore how environmental sustainability can be incorporated into resource allocation tools, such as health technology assessment and multicriteria decision analysis, as well as budgetary processes, such as programme budgeting and marginal analysis. We conclude with some implications for wider health system transformation
Health care · Intersection (aeronautics · Resource (disambiguation · Resource allocation · Resource Efficiency · Sustainability · Climate Change and Health Impacts · Healthcare and Environmental Waste Management · Healthcare Facilities Design and Sustainability · Health Policy
The 2023 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change
The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change
Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne
The environmental footprint of health care
Comprehensive evidence implies a higher social cost of CO2
Equality and Priority
Essential packages of health services in low-income and lower-middle-income countries
Climate action with revenue recycling has benefits for poverty, inequality and well-being
International comparison of health care carbon footprints
On the proportionality between global temperature change and cumulative CO 2 emissions during periods of net negative CO 2 emissions
Quantifying the human cost of global warming
Limits to Health Care
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |