Human Health Metrics for Environmental Decision Support Tools: Lessons fromHealth Economics and Decision Analysis

摘要

Environmental decision support tools often provide information that predicts amultitude of different human health effects due to environmental stressors. Medical decision making and health economics offer a multitude of metrics that allow aggregations of these different health outcomes. This paper provides a review of this literature with special attention to aspects relevant in the environmental context. Based on a characterization of medical and environmental applications, recommendations for the use of human health metrics in different environmental decision support tools have been derived. Further, three metrics (quality adjusted life years QALYs), disability adjusted life years (DALYs) and willingness-to-pay (WTP) have been used to compare a wide range of different environmental risk factors.