Healthcare expenditure on prevention in the spending review era

Disease prevention is the most valuable tool to improve the control individuals have over their health. Nevertheless, OECD countries allocate on average 6% of health spending upon prevention activities. In Italy, in 2012, public expenditure on health care in the living and working environment was 0.34% of GDP; health spending devoted to the collective assistance in the same year constituted 4.1% of health spending (4.8 billion euros). At the interregional level, differences are marked: the effects of this heterogeneity are more acute in times of economic crisis, when the spread of unhealthy behaviours are associated more vigorously barriers to access to prevention programs. The objective of this work is to provide evidence on the cost-effectiveness of funded prevention programs in Italy, focusing on vaccination and screening programs, using this evidence to create a predictive tool for the evaluation of allocative efficiency related to the expenditure on prevention in Italy.