This executive summary presents a concise overview of a new Economic Impacts Framework designed to help researchers, funders, and decision-makers systematically identify and incorporate the full range of economic impacts that healthcare encounters impose on patients and caregivers—beyond traditional medical costs. The framework was developed through extensive multi-stakeholder engagement and emphasizes three core themes: centering patients and caregivers’ lived experiences, broadening the set of economic impacts considered (including non-clinical costs, caregiver burdens, work and education effects, and societal impacts), and adapting research methods to more fully understand how economic burdens affect health behaviors and outcomes. Six major domains of impacts are mapped, with the patient journey at the center, and guiding principles stress authentic engagement, health equity, and mixed methods to capture these complex impacts. The summary also outlines future priorities, such as expanding multi-stakeholder partnerships, fostering culture change in research, identifying new measures and data, and engaging underrepresented communities to drive research and decision-making that better reflect patient needs.
