Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are a survey based method for quantitatively estimating user preferences for products and/or services characteristics and are increasingly being applied in health preference research. This presentation will provide an overview of two innovative applications of DCEs to inform HIV prevention policy. The first will focus on how DCE are more recently being used to inform the design of complex public health interventions and trials, where effectiveness is highly dependent on user uptake and adherence. The second application shows how DCEs can be used to inform cost-effectiveness modelling of new technologies, where there is little data on uptake, or how the package of service in which the new technology is delivered, or indeed its own efficacy, will likely affect uptake. While examples are taken from African settings, the methodological lessons are relevant to the introduction of new prevention technologies across settings.

Biography: Fern Terris-Prestholt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health and Development at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has worked on the economics of HIV prevention since 2000. She has a particular interest in incorporating consumer demand into conventionally supply-side interventions. Her projects span economic evaluations and preference studies of new prevention technologies, including rapid diagnostics for syphilis, HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for and HIV self-testing. She is co-Lead of the Centre for Health Economics in London (CHiL) theme on the Economics of Preferences and Behaviour (tinyurl.com/LSHTM-CHiL ) and co-Convenor of IHEA’s Special Interest Group on Health Preference Research (tinyurl.com/IHEA-Sig-HPR).