As biopharmaceutical companies work to develop vaccines for COVID-19, multiple frameworks are being developed to guide their ethical allocation. Consultants with CRA’s Life Science Practice, Rajini Jayasuriya and Kirsten Axelsen recently collaborated with the Center for Global Health Innovation (CGHI) to develop a framework for vaccine allocation that considers core public health and ethical principles within the context of optimal benefit for the US economy.
In this paper the authors seek to set out ideas on how economic consideration could be taken into account, including health risk, the role of the industry in caring for others or in creating other jobs but recognize that a significant amount of further work would be required to turn this into practical policy proposals.
