Opportunity analysis of newborn screening programs

There exist congenital diseases that reduce newborns’ potential opportunities. This reduction is sometimes alleviated if the congenital disease is detected early by a newborn screening program. We propose a new outcome measurement procedure for newborn screening programs, based on the opportunity gains they offer. We show that, under plausible assumptions, the ranking of the available screening programs for a particular disease, according to this new outcome measurement procedure, does not depend on the metric of opportunity. We also apply our model to the current debate about choosing between a selective or a universal newborn hearing screening program to detect congenital hearing impairments.