Priority setting using multiple criteria: should a lung health programme be implemented in Nepal?

To identify and weigh the various criteria for priority setting, and to assess whether a recently evaluated lung health programme in Nepal should be considered a priority in that country. Through a discrete choice experiment with 66 respondents in Nepal, the relative importance of several criteria for priority setting was determined. Subsequently, a set of interventions, including the lung health programme, was rank ordered on the basis of their overall performance on those criteria. Priority interventions are those that target severe diseases, many beneficiaries and people of middle-age, have large individual health benefits, lead to poverty reduction and are very cost-effective. Certain interventions in tuberculosis control rank highest. The lung health programme ranks 13th out of 34 interventions. This explorative analysis suggests that the lung health programme is among the priorities in Nepal when taking into account a range of relevant criteria for priority setting. The multi-criteria approach can be an important step forward to rational priority setting in developing countries