Harnessing the potential to quantify public preferences for healthcare priorities through citizens' juries

Jennifer A Whitty; Paul Burton; Elizabeth Kendall; Julie Ratcliffe; Andrew Wilson; Peter Littlejohns; Paul A Scuffham

doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2014.61

Harnessing the potential to quantify public preferences for healthcare priorities through citizens' juries

Int J Health Policy Manag. 2014 Jun 16;3(2):57-62. doi: 10.15171/ijhpm.2014.61. eCollection 2014 Jul.

Authors

Jennifer A Whitty¹, Paul Burton², Elizabeth Kendall³, Julie Ratcliffe⁴, Andrew Wilson⁵, Peter Littlejohns⁶, Paul A Scuffham⁷

Affiliations

¹ School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; and Population and Social Health Research Program, Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University, Logan campus, University Drive, Meadowbrook, Queensland, Australia.
² Urban Research Program, Griffith School of Environment, Griffith University, Gold Coast campus, Southport, Queensland, Australia.
³ Centre of National Research on Disability and Rehabilitation, Population and Social Health Research Program, Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University, Logan campus, University Drive, Meadowbrook, Queensland, Australia.
⁴ Flinders Health Economics Group, School of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
⁵ Menzies Centre for Health Policy, School of Public Health, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
⁶ Division of Health and Social Care Research, King's College School of Medicine, London, UK.
⁷ Centre for Applied Health Economics, Population and Social Health Research Program, Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University, Logan campus, University Drive, Meadowbrook, Queensland, Australia.

Abstract

Despite progress towards greater public engagement, questions about the optimal approach to access public preferences remain unanswered. We review two increasingly popular methods for engaging the public in healthcare priority-setting and determining their preferences; the Citizens' Jury (CJ) and Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE). We discuss the theoretical framework from which each method is derived, its application in healthcare, and critique the information it can provide for decision-makers. We conclude that combining deliberation of an informed public via CJs and quantification of preferences using DCE methods, whilst it remains to be tested as an approach to engaging the public in priority-setting, could potentially achieve much richer information than the application of either method in isolation.

Keywords: Citizens’ Jury (CJ); Consumer Participation; Decision-Making; Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE); Health Policy; Public Preferences.