Creating a priority list of non-communicable diseases to support health research funding decision-making

To develop and pilot a framework based on multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to prioritize non-communicable diseases (NCDs) support health research funding decision-making. The involves identifying NCDs be prioritized, specifying prioritization criteria determining their weights from survey of stakeholders. mean the are applied NCDs’ ratings generate ‘total score’ for each NCD, by which prioritized. Nineteen five were included. criteria, in decreasing order importance (mean parentheses), are: deaths across population (27.7 %), loss quality-of-life (23.0 cost patients families (18.6 system (17.2 whether vulnerable groups disproportionately affected (13.4 %). priority list NCDs, stratified into four tiers importance, is: ‘Very critical’ priority: coronary heart disease, back neck pain, diabetes mellitus; ‘Critical’ dementia Alzheimer’s stroke; ‘High’ colon rectum cancer, depressive disorders, chronic obstructive pulmonary kidney breast prostate arthritis, lung cancer; ‘Medium’ asthma, hearing loss, melanoma skin addictive non-melanoma headaches. results indicate prioritizing is feasible effective. could also used other conditions.