The Value of Explicit, Deliberative, and Context-Specified Ethics Analysis for Health Technology Assessment: Evidence From a Novel Approach Piloted in South Africa.

Objectives: This article explores the perceived value, including associated strengths and challenges, of using a context-specified ethics framework to guide deliberative health technology appraisals.

Methods: The South African Values and Ethics for Universal Health Coverage (SAVE-UHC) approach, piloted in South Africa, consisted of 2 phases: (1) convening a national multistakeholder working group to develop a provisional ethics framework and (2) testing the provisional ethics framework through simulated health technology assessment appraisal committee meetings (SACs). Three SACs each reviewed 2 case studies of sample health interventions using the framework.

Developing and piloting a context-specified ethics framework for health technology assessment: the South African Values and Ethics for Universal Health Coverage approach.

Objectives: While ethics has been identified as a core component of health technology assessment (HTA), there are few examples of practical, systematic inclusion of ethics analysis in HTA. Some attribute the scarcity of ethics analysis in HTA to debates about appropriate methodology and the need for ethics frameworks that are relevant to local social values. The "South African Values and Ethics for Universal Health Coverage" (SAVE-UHC) project models an approach that countries can use to develop HTA ethics frameworks that are specific to their national contexts.

'I'd say I'm fat, I'm not obese': obesity normalisation in urban-poor South Africa.

Objective: In the past decade, South Africa's obesity epidemic has increased in both children and adults, and being overweight is becoming the norm. Several contributing factors lead to the normalisation of obesity. One of these is the culturally entrenched likeness of larger body sizes or shapes within a milieu of easily accessible unhealthy food and beverages.