Biography:

Sinéad Furey graduated from Ulster University (Northern Ireland) with a research degree (DPhil), with specialties including food and consumer policy and legislation. She started working at the Consumer Council where she continued her research as a Senior Consumer Affairs Officer in food, water and consumer policy; as a Nutritional Associate at the Education and Training Inspectorate inspecting approaches to whole-school food policies and practices and as a senior Executive Officer at the Food Standards Agency where she led food policy research programmes. She currently lectures and researches at Ulster University with research interests in food poverty and food access.

Abstract:

Statement of the Problem: Food poverty - the inability to afford or access a healthy diet - manifests itself as the dilemma of putting food on the table alongside long-term effects of habitually consuming poor nutritional quality foods. Accordingly, food poverty has become a public health emergency. In response, food banks have increased rapidly and demand for their assistance has grown. Food banks have become emblematic of modern society, standing as a metaphor for poverty in society. Essentially, the govern mentality around food has shifted from the state to the charity sector.

Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: This research puts a social cost on the difference between an emergency food parcel as provided by a food bank and a consensually acceptable basket of healthy food. Using shopping basket methodology to investigate the affordability of food, commonly-requested items from food banks’ food lists were identified. The normal price of the cheapest option for each food item was recorded.

Findings: Comparing the consensual budget standard for a lone pensioner’s food basket (£57.05) to a food bank’s lowest-priced, one-week food list (£17.66) concludes that a nutritious diet is three times more expensive than the emergency food parcels distributed by food banks. Similarly, comparing the average UK household’s food expenditure (£56.80) to the cost of a food bank diet (£17.66) illustrates well the shortfall in the standard of living between the two dietary experiences.

Conclusion & Significance: Citizens should have the right to food and the means to access a consensually acceptable basket of food.

Biography:

Thilo Schaufler has been graduated from University of Mannheim, Germany with a degree in Economics and Political Sciences and a doctoral degree in Health Economics. He has more than ten years of experience in roles of increasing responsibility in Market Access and Health Policy in the pharmaceutical industry.

Abstract:

Traditional frameworks to assess the value of therapeutic options do not provide a comprehensive picture of their full value for patients, health systems and the wider economy and society. This limited picture of value risks driving decision-making towards a narrow set of trade-offs within existing budgets instead of supporting additional investment in health overall.

We propose a novel Integrated Value Framework to provide the comprehensive understanding of value that can support engagement with policymakers across government to address such investment. We review existing frameworks such as those proposed by the ASCO and ESMO, and identify gaps in their coverage of value that are important for patients and for policy-makers. We propose two key methodological innovations. The first is to extend the scope of value assessment to capture benefits to the wider economy and society beyond health systems, such as those relating to jobs, welfare costs, social and family impacts for patients and informal caregivers, and scientific research, reflecting the recognition of the wider value of investment in health. The second is to capture both monetary and non-monetary dimensions of value, drawing on increasing attention to non-monetary elements of value and well-being at societal level. 

We discuss how this framework can help to improve decision-making at policy level by ensuring a better understanding of the full value of therapeutic options. This is important both in developing countries (with typically low levels of investment in health) and developed countries (where large overall budgets can mask limited flexibility to redirect funding towards greatest value).