Keynote Speakers

Erik Schokkaert +info
University of Leuven, Bélgica

Erik Schokkaert is full professor of welfare economics and health economics at the Department of Economics of the KULeuven. He chairs the interdisciplinary think tank “Metaforum” of the KULeuven. He is also faculty member and former Research Director of CORE (Université catholique de Louvain) and has been visiting professor at the London School of Economics and at the Universid ICESI in Cali.

His research focuses on (a) the modelling of different concepts of distributive justice; (b) the concept of individual well-being and quality of life; (c) the application of these concepts for the analysis of specific policy problems in the fields of health, social security and taxation.

He published (among others) in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, Demography, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Social Choice and Welfare, Economics and Philosopy, European Economic Review, Health Policy, Economica. Together with Wulf Gaertner he wrote a book on Empirical Social Choice: Questionnaire-Experimental Studies on Distributive Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Presentation title and abstract

JUSTICE IN HEALTH: HOW TO MEASURE INEQUALITY OF WHAT?

I will discuss two arguments that have been used to justify inequalities in health. The first relates to the notion of individual responsibility for lifestyle. I will describe the methodological and ethical challenges raised by the empirical work on equality of opportunity. In a deterministic world, it is not meaningful to hold individuals responsible for what is “under their control”. Equality of opportunity means giving everybody equal chances to realize what they themselves consider to be important in life. This brings me to the second argument: what matters from an equity point of view is not health but individual well-being. If one accepts that “authentic” individual preferences should be respected in measuring individual well-being, happiness and subjective satisfaction have to be discarded as attractive measures of individual well-being. I propose the notion of “equivalent income” as a better alternative and show how it can be made operational in a health setting.

Karen Bloor +info
University of York, Reino Unido

Karen Bloor is Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the University of York, and Research Champion for Health and Wellbeing, working to catalyse interdisciplinary research across the University. Her research has focused particularly on the application of economics to health policy, covering a range of subjects relating to the financing and organisation of healthcare, including analysis of medical labour markets, medical practice variations, pharmaceutical markets and various aspects of healthcare reform.

Working jointly with the King’s Fund, Karen co-leads the Partnership for Responsive Policy Analysis and Research (PREPARE), funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. This research programme aims to improve the quality of evidence upon which strategic health policy decisions are based, by providing short-term responsive research, expert advice, policy briefings and empirical and theoretical analysis.

Karen’s other recent research projects focus particularly on the health care workforce (general practitioners in the emergency department (GPED), medical revalidation, nurse staffing and outcomes, and values based recruitment).

Presentation title and abstract

Informing health policy with economic thinking and evidence

Policy should ideally be informed by rigorous evidence, but political constraints and differences in perspective mean that, in the words of George Stigler, “reform and research seldom march arm in arm”. In this presentation, Karen Bloor will reflect on over 25 years of working to inform health policy with economic thinking and evidence, outlining past, present and future challenges of and opportunities for using economics to improve population health and care.

Manuel Gomes +info
University College London, Reino Unido

Manuel Gomes é Professor Associado em Economia da Saúde na University College London (UCL). Licenciado em Economia pela Universidade de Aveiro, Mestre em Economia pela Universidade do Porto (Portugal), Mestre em Economia da Saúde pela Universidade de York e Doutorado em Economia da Saúde pela Universidade de Londres. Anteriormente foi Professor Auxiliar no grupo de Avaliação Económica e Politica de Saúde na London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (Universidade de Londres), Investigado Convidado no Centro de Economia da Saúde, Universidade de York, e no Departamento de Política de Saúde, Universidade de Harvard (EUA). A sua investigação incide no desenvolvimento, avaliação e aplicação de métodos econométricos à economia da saúde. Concluiu recentemente investigação financiada por uma Bolsa de Início de Carreira do Medical Research Council (UK), a qual se debruçou sobre o desenvolvimento de métodos estatísticos para abordar problemas de dados incompletos em estudos económicos na área de cuidados de saúde, em particular, em estudos com uma estrutura hierárquica ou do tipo observacional. Outros interesses incluem estudos de avaliação econométrica no contexto de ensaios clínicos e estudos observacionais utilizando bases de dados de processos clínicos electrónicos, com foco especial na avaliação de novos tratamentos para doenças cardiovasculares, doenças mentais e cancro.

Presentation title and abstract

Coping with incomplete data in health economic studies: a quest to recover the missing pieces

Missing data is pervasive in health economic studies. The major concern is that the individuals for whom data are missing tend to be systematically different from those individuals with complete information in ways that are related to the decision problem at hand. In practice, health economic studies tend to restrict their analysis to complete records. Not only this results in important loss of information and efficiency, but also leads to biased inference. This talk will provide an overview of the specific challenges raised by health economic studies for tackling the missing data, clarify some common misconceptions about the plausibility of simple approaches for handling missing data, and discuss recent work that Manuel Gomes and his colleagues are pursuing in a quest to recover the missing pieces.