should continue to be one of many elements considered in a deliberative policy development process. Numbers can be very powerful in policy contexts; thus it is important that decision makers not only consider the results of economic analyses but also engage in deliberations with all constituencies and affected parties.

Recommendation 8: The regulatory decision-making process should explicitly address and incorporate the distributional, ethical, and other implications of a proposed intervention along with the quantified results of BCA and CEA. Comparisons of different interventions should highlight these distinctive features of the interventions and also any methodological differences, both in the case of cost-effectiveness ratios and of estimates of net benefits.

Recommendation 9: Because of the many value dimensions encompassed by societal decisions regarding the mitigation of risks to health and safety and the far-ranging impacts of such decisions, policy makers and program administrators should work to ensure the substantive involvement of a broad range of individuals and groups at all stages of policy development for regulating risks.

Although useful for regulatory analysis, the data and methods currently available for measuring and valuing health in CEA have limitations that should be addressed by a long-term research agenda. The areas where additional routine data collection and research are most needed and likely to be fruitful include the following.

Recommendation 10: A high research priority should be improving the data used to assess the health risks (effects on incidence of particular types of illness, injuries, and deaths, and the duration and latency of effects) addressed by regulatory actions.

Recommendation 11: The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and other federal agencies should collect HRQL information through routinely administered population health surveys and other major studies and data collection efforts related to risk assessment and monitoring.

Recommendation 12: DHHS should coordinate, with the involvement of federal regulatory offices and agencies, the development of an integrated research agenda to improve the quality, applicability, and breadth of HRQL