Will the growth spurt continue? : Trends in child health economic evaluation, 1980 to 2013

Other significant trends included more publications in health economics/policy journals and sub-specialty journals in the later period (X2 p<0.0001), a higher proportion of studies of preventive interventions in the later period (X2 p<0.0001), and more studies in children and fewer in perinates in the later period (X2 p<0.0001). [...] This includes the impact of child growth and development on disease processes and intervention effectiveness; a reliance on care-giving adults such as parents and teachers to facilitate access to healthcare services and act as a proxy for reporting health outcomes; the inability to accurately measure preferences for health states for very young children and infants; and the importance of consideri [...] These variations may be a result of the small number of pediatric economic evaluations included in the CEA registry, which was 35 at the time of the analysis compared with the 632 CUAs currently in PEDE. [...] The current analysis of PEDE found that the leading conditions studied were infectious and parasitic diseases at 29.2%, with the next most frequent condition being diseases of pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium at 7.2%. [...] Publication of economic evaluations in journals of pediatrics/perinatal medicine and subspecialty medicine were frequent in both the early analysis of PEDE (1980-1999) and the later years (2000-2013) suggesting that most studies are directed to a clinical decision-making audience.