Investing in Non-Communicable Diseases: An Estimation of the Return on Investment for Prevention and Treatment Services

This article from The Lancet uses the NCD impact module of the OneHealth Tool to estimate the economic benefits of increasing investments in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) prevention. The OneHealth Tool calculates the health benefits of scaling up interventions, estimates their health care costs, and applies a monetary value to social benefits of increased years of healthy lives. Projections based on this tool estimate that 7-8 million people will die from cardiovascular disease alone by 2025 in 20 low- and middle- income countries facing the greatest burden of NCDs. This suggests that strong action is needed to reduce mortality from NCDs by 30 percent to meet benchmarks set by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Interventions that are included in the analyses focus on decreasing exposure to tobacco, sodium reduction, and drug therapies, as they illustrate effects of treatment and prevention programs. Results suggest that scaling these interventions could prevent up to 13 million incidents of stroke and 8 million incidents of ischemic heart disease in a 15-year period. In turn, this would increase human capital and productivity. Drug therapies have been shown to be the most effective interventions but are difficult to scale up in comparison to cost-effective preventative interventions. The authors recommend significant investment in these interventions along with strengthening health systems through interdisciplinary action. Ultimately, the authors suggest that the OneHealth Tool should be utilized at the country level to increase accuracy of the calculations when exploring investment cases.

This article is fifth in a Lancet series of five papers on NCDs and economics that describes the extent to which socioeconomic factors drive trends in NCDs, the equity impacts of health policies designed to reduce disease burden, and the ways in which NCD control can result in improved economic growth.