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This editorial aims to outline the context of healthcare priority‐setting, and summarise each of the other ten papers in this special edition. It introduces a new multidisciplinary research programme drawing on ethics, philosophy, health economics, political science and health technology assessment, out of which the papers in this edition have arisen.

Key normative concepts are introduced and policy and research context provided to frame subsequent papers in the edition.

Common challenges of health priority‐setting are faced by many countries across the world, and a range of social value judgments is in play as resource allocation decisions are made. Although the challenges faced by different countries are in many ways similar, the way in which social values affect the processes and content of priority‐setting decisions means that those challenges are resolved very differently in a variety of social, political, cultural and institutional settings, as subsequent papers in this edition demonstrate. How social values affect decision making in this way is the subject of a new multi‐disciplinary research programme.

Technical analyses of health priority setting are commonplace, but approaching the issues from the perspective of social values and conducting comparative analyses across countries with very different cultural, social and institutional contexts provides the content for a new research agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the roles of social values in the reform of coverage decisions for Thailand's Universal Health Coverage (UC) plan in 2009 and 2010.

Qualitative techniques, including document review and personal communication, were employed for data collection and triangulation. All relevant data and information regarding the reform and three case study interventions were interpreted and analysed according to the thematic elements in the conceptual framework.

Social values determined changes in the UC plan in two steps: the development of coverage decision guidelines and the introduction of such guidelines in benefit package formulation. The former was guided by process values, while the latter was shaped by different content ideals of stakeholders and policymakers. Analysis of the three interventions suggests that in allocating its resources to subsidise particular services, the UC authority took into account not only cost‐effectiveness, but also budget impacts, equity and solidarity. These social values competed with each other and, in many instances, the prioritisation of benefit candidates was not led solely by evidence, but also by value judgments, even though transparency was recognised as an ultimate goal of reform.

The study findings indicate room for improvement and for future research – the current conceptual framework is inadequate to capture all the crucial elements which influence health prioritisation, as well as their interactions with social values.

The paper fills a gap in literature as it enhances understanding of the effects of social value judgments in real‐life health prioritisation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the organisational and procedural arrangements for priority setting in England and Wales. It describes the role of social values in the decision‐making process.

The processes and content of decisions made by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence are analysed using the framework developed by Clark and Weale for identifying social values in health priority‐setting.

While countries are seeking to achieve similar outcomes from their health prioritisation processes, each country has established different systems that reflect the social and legal framework underpinning their health systems. England is somewhat unique in being explicit about assessing “value for money” and using formal cost‐effectiveness in developing policy.

Many countries are now considering the use of formal health economic methodologies to assess the value and prioritise health care interventions. However there is increasing recognition of the importance of values other than efficiency (cost effectiveness) in making acceptable decisions. This is manifest in the range of potential new approaches being developed including multiple criteria decision analysis.