[11] Priority setting decision-makers often make it a point to not only provide assistance and resources but to also give voices to those who are often unheard and invisible in the privileged system.
[14] Although decision makers have the power to constraint and provide aid, there also tends to be an asymmetric information[15] as health organizations might overestimate which priorities are desired.
"Rudan et al. says that priority-setting efforts have relied on "consensus reached by panels of experts" and as a result have not been systematic enough, and that this has "often made it difficult to present the identified priorities to wider audiences as legitimate and fair".
[1] Glassman et al. notes that criticisms of priority-setting include "the weak data on which estimates of burden, cost, and effectiveness relied; the value judgments implicit in disability-adjusted life year age weighting and discounting decisions; and treatment of equity issues, as well as the political difficulties associated with translating a ground zero package into a public budget based on historical inputs"; and the consideration of only health maximization at the expense of other objectives such as fairness.
[6]: 16 Jeremy Shiffman has said that some bodies such as the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and The Lancet are prominent in priority-setting due to their dominion rather than data and analysis, and also notes that the process of creating the Sustainable Development Goals was not sufficiently transparent.