Abstract
There exist congenital diseases that reduce newborns’ potential opportunities. This reduction is sometimes alleviated if the congenital disease is detected early by a newborn screening program. We propose a new outcome measurement procedure for newborn screening programs, based on the opportunity gains they offer. We show that, under plausible assumptions, the ranking of the available screening programs for a particular disease, according to this new outcome measurement procedure, does not depend on the metric of opportunity. We also apply our model to the current debate about choosing between a selective or a universal newborn hearing screening program to detect congenital hearing impairments.
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We are most grateful to Marco Mariotti, Lars P. Østerdal, Erik Schokkaert, an Associate Editor of this journal, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. Financial support from IVIE, Fundación BBVA, Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (CSD2006-16, ECO2008-03883, SEJ2005-04805, SEJ2007-62656), and Junta de Andalucía (P06-SEJ-01645) is gratefully acknowledged.
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Herrero, C., Moreno-Ternero, J.D. Opportunity analysis of newborn screening programs. Rev Econ Design 12, 259–277 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10058-008-0052-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10058-008-0052-9