Abstracts

The potential health and economic impact and cost effectiveness of food policy interventions for the prevention and control of overweight and obesity in Kenya: a stakeholder engaged modelling study

Not scheduled

20m

Oral NCD Health Financing and Policy

Description

Background
To meet global and national obesity reduction targets, policy options directed at the ‘obesogenic’ environment help create healthy environments that stimulate physical activity and encourage healthy diets. Evaluation of such policies enables identification of those that are impactful and cost effective to inform allocation of resources and priority setting for health.
Methods
We used a proportional multistate life table model (Kenya Obesity Model) to assess the potential impact on health conditions and healthcare costs of four food policy interventions selected by stakeholders in Kenya. In addition, we estimated potential productivity gains using the Human Capital Approach. Considering a health system perspective, two specific interventions were assessed for cost-effectiveness. We modelled the 2019 Kenya population over their remaining lifetime. A 3% discount rate was applied.
Findings
Over the lifetime of the 2019 population 203,266 health-adjusted life years (HALYs) could be gained for a 20% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, 151,718 HALYs for mandatory kilojoule menu labelling in formal sector restaurants, 3.7 million HALYs for a change in consumption levels related to supermarket food purchase patterns and 13.1 million HALYs for a change in national consumption back to the 1975 average levels of energy intake, (4, 3, 73 and 261 HALYs per 1,000 persons, respectively).
Lifetime healthcare cost savings were approximately USD 0.14 billion, USD 0.08 billion, USD 1.9 billion and USD 6.2 billion (3, 2, 38, 124 per capita, respectively). Lifetime productivity gains were approximately USD 1.8 billion, USD 1.2 billion, USD 28 billion and USD 92 billion, respectively.
A 20% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and mandatory kilojoule menu labelling were assessed for cost effectiveness and found dominant, i.e., health promoting and cost-saving.

Conclusion
All four interventions evaluated yielded substantive health and economic benefits. These interventions present potential solutions to overweight and obesity in Kenya and should be considered for implementation.