Despite considerable progress in measuring family spillover effects for economic evaluations, much work remains. This editorial describes recent advances in the field and identifies areas for future research. In particular, we point out the need to clarify the potential for double-counting from including spillover effects related to caregiver time and spillover effects related to family quality of life outcomes in Reference Case analyses. We believe that research on family spillover effects has the potential to increase interest in the field of economic evaluation and its use as a tool for decision making.
Keywords: QALYs; cost; economic evaluation; family spillover effects; reference case analysis.