Public preferences for prioritizing preventive and curative health care interventions: A discrete choice experiment

Through a discrete choice experiment we elicited the Belgian adult population’s (18-75y; N = 750) preferences for prioritizing health care. We used a Bayesian D-efficient design with partial profiles, which enables considering a large number of attributes and interaction effects. We included the attributes (i) type of intervention (cure versus prevention), (ii) effectiveness, (iii) risk of adverse effects, (iv) severity of illness, (v) link between the illness and patient’s health-related lifestyle, (vi) timespan between intervention and effect and (vii) patient’s age group. All attributes were significant, with patient’s lifestyle and age being the most influential. Interaction effects were found, showing that prevention was preferred to cure for disease in young adults, as well as for severe and lethal disease in people of any age. Substantial preference heterogeneity exists between respondents from different age groups, with different lifestyles and different health states.