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Article History

Received: 19 September 2018

Accepted: 13 May 2019

First Online: 22 May 2019

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Not applicable.

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: Monika Bullinger, Corinne Buysse, Wolfgang Greiner, Markus Knuf, Ole Marten, and Andrea Monteiro declare that they have no competing interests. Markus Kirchner, Nicolas Van de Velde, and Robert Welte are employees of the GSK group of companies. Florian Koerber was employed by the GSK group of companies at the time of study conduct. Nicolas Van de Velde and Robert Welte hold shares in the GSK group of companies. To support his research on the value of vaccination, David Bloom received grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, GSK, Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, and Sanofi Pasteur-MSD. He also reports personal fees from GSK, Merck, Dynavax, and Pfizer, and participation in advisory boards for the same. He received personal fees for conducting research on the value of treatment from Gilead Life Sciences as well. Hannah Christensen is affiliated to the National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit (NIHR HPRU) in Evaluation of Interventions at University of Bristol in partnership with Public Health England (PHE). She reports monies paid to her employer from AstraZeneca, GSK, IMS Health, and Sanofi Pasteur. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, the Department of Health or Public Health England. Philippe De Wals received research grants, and reimbursements of travel expenses from vaccine manufacturers including GSK, Novartis, Sanofi Pasteur, and Pfizer, as well as from governmental agencies including the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services, Health Canada, and the Public Health Agency of Canada. Philippe De Wals has an advisory role as member of the Quebec immunization Committee and the (Canadian) National Advisory Committee on Immunization. Christian Dohna-Schwake reports a personal fee for GSK advisory board attendance. Philipp Henneke received reimbursements of travel expenses and honoraria from GSK, Pfizer and Abbvie, as well as from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the WHO. Burkhard Lawrenz reports personal fees from GSK, during the conduct of the study, and personal fees from MSD, Sanofi, SPMSD, and Pfizer, outside the submitted work. JP Sevilla reports personal fees from GSK, during the conduct of the study, and outside the submitted work. He is employed by Data for Decisions LLC, an economics consulting firm which contracts to perform vaccine-related economic research for many pharmaceutical companies including but not limited to GSK. He is also a Research Associate at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health (Chan School) where his research activities involve vaccine-related economic research supported by grants from pharmaceutical companies. At the Chan School, he is also a Technical Advisor on the Secretariat of the Value of Vaccines Research Network, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Claire Wright is employed by the Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF), which has received educational grants from GSK and sponsorship for their biannual conference. She was also awarded a fee from GSK for contributing to an advisory board regarding this work. The consultancy fee was paid directly to MRF.

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