Description
Background
As the environmental factors affecting human health and well-being have attracted growing attention, the costs of environment-related health effects now affect several nations worldwide. There has been increasing concern about the costs of environment-related illness. Therefore modification of environmental conditions should provide a starting point for reducing illness and diseases; with subsequent reduction in environmental health costs. The costs of concern include direct costs(expenditure on health services- drugs, materials, labor) and indirect costs(the sum of costs for time lost from work and present discounted value of earnings lost to mortality). Despite the ongoing innovations for environmental health cost-effectiveness, escalation in the average environmental health cost is a major economic concern to society. It is therefore important to assess the cost-effectiveness of strategies for optimizing costs in a sustainable health environment. Health ministries must plan well to attain achievable budgetary goals for environmental protection and health-related diseases.
Purpose
The objective of the study is to develop a cost-effective mathematical model so that direct and indirect costs are optimally budgeted for environmental health. This is done with the goals of increasing efficiency in controlling health costs, promoting optimal use of available resources, and developing an understanding of the relationship between health and the environment.
Methods
In this study, a multi-objective goal programming model is proposed and initially, the objective function is defined whose goals are optimized hierarchically.. The model seeks to minimize the deviations of the objective function; subject to the goal values of expenditure allocated to direct and indirect costs of health and the environment. Using the simplex method, the model is solved as a standard minimization problem. A numerical example is presented for illustration that determines the overachievement and underachievement of direct and indirect costs of budgeted expenditure for the environmental health program.
Results
Results from the numerical example presented provide a satisfactory solution for budgetary planning purposes towards environmental health. The overachievement and underachievement of budgeted expenditures are established for analysis and evaluation. The proposed model can be effective; where relevant direct and indirect costs can be prioritized if necessary; to sustain the environmental health program.
Conclusions
The multi-objective goal programming model for regulating budgetary environmental health expenditure can be effective; for budgetary planning purposes of the health and environment sector. The model can support cost-effectiveness of environmental health programs. In addition, healthcare facilities can be in a position to effect cost-effective diagnostics to support environmental health-related diseases; which can also be tailored to local populations and healthcare ecosystems in both developed and underdeveloped nations worldwide.
| Contact Geneva Health Forum | I just want to receive information about the GHF 2024 conference / Je souhaite simplement recevoir des informations sur la conférence GHF 2024 |
|---|
