Measuring women’s preferences for valuing fetal health outcomes in cost-utility analysis

How much should the NHS pay for a treatment that prevents miscarriage or stillbirth? The answer depends on how much society values these health outcomes. Values that help the NHS decide which treatments to pay for have been widely researched for adults, and have led to the development of QALY-based cost-utility analysis. No such evidence is yet available for fetuses in pregnancy. As a result, studies evaluating pregnancy interventions have often attached either no value to fetal outcomes, or valued these outcomes without also considering the impact of interventions on the pregnant woman.

The aim of this DPhil is to explore and quantify the preferences of women who are or have been pregnant for fetal outcomes. The study will comprise a systematic review, qualitative research and a discrete choice experiment. The results will help to inform the development of valuation methods for fetal outcomes, improving consistency in future resource allocation decision making.