President's Message from Winnie Yip
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
iHEA News March 2021
iHEA News is the official newsletter of the International Health Economics Association.
President's Message from Winnie Yip
iHEA’s commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusiveness
Last year, the iHEA Board released a statement confirming our
commitment “to undertaking concrete actions that will contribute to the
changes necessary to promote social justice, diversity and inclusiveness
within our association and more broadly.” We commissioned Professor
Emma Frew to undertake a member survey on “Equality, Diversity and
Inclusiveness” (EDI) issues. The Board contributed to the design of the
survey questionnaire and the survey received ethics approval from the
University of Birmingham.
The results of the survey are now available and the full report can be found here. The survey
results highlighted various issues iHEA must address in order to meet our EDI responsibilities.
These range from improving EDI on governance structures such as the Board and committees,
to the biennial Congress and between congress activities such as the mentoring program and
our webinar series. The Board of Directors has reviewed the survey findings and discussed
strategies to promote an environment where all members feel included, all our services are
accessible, and where all our members’ contributions are respected and valued. We have
developed an explicit set of short-term actions for the next year, and medium to longer term
actions to progress towards our EDI objectives; the full strategy can be found here.
We encourage our members to review the survey findings’ report and our strategy document;
we welcome your feedback as we want to listen, reflect, learn and make changes to enhance
EDI in our association. We will review our strategies, monitor and report on EDI progress on an
annual basis to ensure transparency and accountability to our members.
One of the first actions we have taken is to update our membership form to include fields that
will allow us to develop a fuller picture of our membership profile in terms of EDI. This
information will assist us in identifying areas of under-representation, to refine our EDI
strategies and monitor progress over time. This data will be treated with the utmost
confidentiality and only aggregate analyses will be presented in monitoring reports.
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
1
We encourage all members to login to their membership account and complete the new EDI
fields (see later in the newsletter for details on how to do this).
We are also taking immediate action to respond to the survey findings through our upcoming
virtual congress. The survey highlighted dissatisfaction with lack of diversity in congress
plenaries, not only in being focused on research undertaken in a limited number of high-income
country contexts but a lack of plurality of perspectives being presented. We are currently
finalizing the speakers and panelists for the four plenary or centerpiece sessions for the 2021
congress, and have tried to ensure an improved regional and gender balance in speakers, and
that the content reflects a range of different country contexts and perspectives. Full details of
these sessions will be announced in the near future. We look forward to your active
participation in this virtual event.
Update on the 2021 iHEA Congress
The process of peer-reviewing individual abstracts and organized session proposals for the 2021
iHEA Congress has concluded, and the Program Chairs for each of the health economics fields
and the Scientific Committee Chairs have finalized the selection of papers to be presented (see
details of the Scientific Committee members here). Comparable review score levels were
applied in this selection process to the 2017 and 2019 Congresses, with Program Chairs
carefully checking that no abstracts were unduly advantaged or dis-advantaged by divergence
across individual reviewers and the Scientific Chairs ensuring parity across the health economics
fields. The outcome of this review process has been sent via email to all abstract submitters; if
you have not yet received an email, please check your spam folder. The accepted abstracts hold
the promise of high-quality research presentations at the virtual congress.
A total of 73 organized sessions were accepted, with 399 individual abstracts being selected for
oral presentation and 296 for E-posters. Although this is a higher number of posters than at
previous congresses, the 2017 and 2019 congresses had ‘short oral’ sessions which included up
to 190 papers. The E-posters will be very similar to previous congresses ‘short oral’
presentations as all poster presenters will be encouraged to prepare their poster and record a
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
2
brief presentation to accompany it. There will be specific poster sessions in which delegates
can engage with poster presenters.
The regional distribution of those with accepted presentations is as follows:
26% are from time zones GMT +12 to GMT +7 (New Zealand to South-East Asia – with
13% being located on the east coast of Australia and nearly 8% in China and the west
coast of Australia);
48% are from time zones GMT +5:30 to GMT (India, Europe and Africa, with 17% being
in the Central European and Central Africa time zones, 14% in the UK and West Africa,
and 12% in the GMT zone); and
26% are from time zones GMT -3 to GMT -7 (Latin America and North America – with
16% being located in the EDT zone)
This time zone distribution of presenters (and likely delegates) will inform the final program
schedule. An illustration of what the program will look like (NOT the final version) is presented
below. The first and last days (Monday and Thursday respectively) will run over a 6-7 hour
period, while the program will run over a 16-hour period on Tuesday and Wednesday. This will
ensure that no matter where in the world you are located, you will be able to participate in
several live sessions. The opening and closing plenaries (or ‘centerpiece’ sessions) will be held
around 12pm to 1pm GMT to enable the largest possible global audience but the ‘centerpiece
sessions’ on other days will be held at times that are more convenient for delegates in Australia
and South-East Asia, and in Latin and North America, respectively.
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
3
Feedback from delegates at previous iHEA congresses has highlighted the preference for fewer
sessions running in parallel to each other (at the 2017 and 2019 congresses, we had up to 26
concurrent sessions in each time slot). The virtual congress provides us with an opportunity to
do just that. We will have considerably more session slots spread over the four days of the
congress than at onsite congresses, with a planned maximum of 8 or 9 concurrent sessions for
oral and poster presentations in each time slot.
There will also be slots for regional meetings, meetings of Special Interest Groups, mentoring of
early career researchers and general networking opportunities. We will provide a virtual
lounge, so that you can grab a cup of coffee or tea (sorry we can’t provide that!), see who is in
the lounge and if colleagues and friends who you would like to catch up with are there, you can
‘walk over’ to them and chat. There will also be an exciting pre-congress session program that
will be held in the two weeks before the main congress.
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
4
Congress Registration is Now Open
Click Here to Register
Please note that if you have been accepted to make an oral or E-poster presentation, you
must register by 6th April, 2021 at the latest so that the program can be finalized. If you do
not register by that date, your abstract will be removed from the program.
Even if you are not going to be presenting a paper or a poster, it is well worth registering for the
2021 iHEA Congress. The benefits of participating in the Congress are:
Exclusive access to all live sessions, which are being structured to allow time for
discussion of presentations
Access to all session recordings for a year after the congress; you will be able to view
any sessions you aren’t able to attend live, and can send questions or comments to
presenters via the asynchronous Q&A tool
Access to all E-poster presentations
Plenty of opportunities for networking
If you are not a presenter, register before early bird registration ends on 30th April 2021.
Webinar News
Upcoming Webinars for March & April
March 26, 2021
Validation of Value of Statistical Life as an output measure for health system's
efficiency/ 9AM (EDT) / 2PM (UK) / 4PM (Cape Town)
The discussion shall encompass:
VSL as a potential metric of health systems efficiency
The formulation process of the mathematical model
Estimation of parameters and computation of elasticity
Empirical illustration
Speaker: Professor Gabriel Martinez
The research and academic work of Professor Martinez are focused on public policy
development and addressing related issues with interest in labor and health economics, and
industrial organization and regulation.
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
5
He is the full professor and the director of the graduate program in Public Policy at Instituto
Tecnologico Autonomo de México, commonly known as ITAM. Gabriel is a PhD. from University
of Chicago, USA. His book, "Mexican Welfare State" is a compendium of social protection.
Recently, he published a proposal to reform the Mexican health system (available here). His
publication also includes topics on minimum wage policies, pension fund regulation and the
effect of health on labor income.
Organized by: Health systems’ efficiency Special Interest Group (EFFSIG)
REGISTER HERE
April 28, 2021
Webinar: Social variation in health opportunity cost in England
9AM (EDT) / 2PM (UK) / 4PM (Cape Town)
Speaker: Dr. James Love-Koh, University of York
Discussant: Assistant Prof. Stephane Verguet
This webinar will consist of a half hour presentation by Dr James Love-Koh of his work to
estimate social variation in the health effects of changes in health care expenditure applied to
England. We will then have half an hour for discussion including how the concept of health
opportunity cost distributions might be applied to LMICs which often lack this detailed data.
Organized by: Equity-informative Economic Evaluation Special Interest Group
REGISTER HERE
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
6
Please Update Your Profile Details
As indicated in the President’s message, to better understand our membership profile and
monitor progress in terms of equality, diversity and inclusiveness, we have updated our
membership form. We would be very grateful if all members could complete these fields and
update their details.
To do this, enter your username and password on this webpage.
You will be taken to the member section of the website – click on the dropdown list next to
your name at the top of the page; and click on “Account and Settings” and you will be taken to
your membership form to complete.
Call for Abstracts for the 2022 ASSA Annual
Meeting
The International Health Economics Association (iHEA), the American Society of Health
Economists (ASHEcon), and the Health Economics Research Organization (HERO) are soliciting
papers for presentation at the 2022 Allied Social Science Association (ASSA) annual meeting to
be held in Boston, MA from January 7- 9, 2022 (Friday, Saturday, & Sunday). Based upon
submitted abstracts, papers will be selected for 2 iHEA-organized sessions, 1 ASHEcon-
organized session and 5 HERO-organized sessions.
iHEA seeks abstracts for sessions that will focus primarily on internationally relevant topics in
health economics, ASHEcon seeks abstracts on topics related to US-focused health economics
topics and HERO seeks abstracts on all issues of relevance to the health economics field.
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
7
Submission Guidelines
Anyone is eligible to submit an abstract. Abstract text must be 300 words or less.
If you would like to submit your abstract as part of a group of abstracts for consideration as a
complete session, you must provide suggested discussants for each paper.
Please note that this is not a guarantee that all papers in a set would necessarily be on the
program.
iHEA, ASHEcon, HERO are independent organizations each with affiliate status in the ASSA.
Abstracts can be submitted here by May 3, 2021.
Recordings of iHEA Sessions at Annual ASSA/AEA
Meeting Now Available
iHEA hosted two organized sessions on issues related to the economics of COVID at the annual
ASSA/AEA meeting, held virtually in January 2021. The recordings of these sessions are now
available on the iHEA website and can be found here.
Impact of COVID-19 information and policies on risk perceptions, preventive
behaviors and pro-social behavior
Chair: David Bishai, Johns Hopkins University
Perceived Costs and Benefits of COVID-19 Social Distancing Measures and Compliance
Behaviors: Evidence from Subjective Expectations
Gabriella Conti (University College London), Pamela Giustinelli (Bocconi University)
Discussant: Sue Horton, University of Waterloo, Canada
Health and Economic Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis in South Africa and Brazil: Exploring
Experiences, Perceptions and Policy Preferences
Mylene Lagarde (London School of Economics), Irini Papanicolas (London School of Economics),
Loveday Penn-Kekana (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), Nicholas Stacey
(University of the Witwatersrand and London School of Economics)
Discussant: Ellen Moscoe, University of Pennsylvania
Battling the Infodemics: Health Communication Effectiveness During COVID-19
Iryna Sabat (Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal), Nirosha Elsem Varghese (Bocconi
University, Italy), Sebastian Neuman-Böhme (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands),
Pedro Pita Barros (Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal), Werner Brouwer (Erasmus
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
8
University Rotterdam, Netherlands), Job van Exel (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands),
Jonas Schreyögg (University of Hamburg, Germany), Tom Stargardt (University of Hamburg,
Germany)
Discussant: Matthew Quaife, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Nudging for Lockdown: Behavioural Insights from an Online Experiment
Thierry Blayac (University of Montpelier), Dimitri Dubois (University of Montpelier), Sebastien
Duchene (University of Montpelier), Phu Nguyen Van (University of Strasbourg), Ismael Rafai
(University of Montpelier), Bruno Ventelou (University of Marseille), Marc Willinger (University
of Montpelier)
Discussant: Leontine Goldzahl, Edhec Business School
COVID-19: Impacts on Household Economics, Inequality and Poverty
Chair: Winnie Yip, Harvard University
Epidemics and Income Inequality, 2000–2019
Chrys Esseau-Thomas (International Monetary Fund), Omar Galárraga (Brown University), Sherif
Khalifa (California State University)
Discussant: Arnab Mukherji, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
Wage Inequality and Poverty Effects of Lockdown and Social Distancing in Europe
Juan C. Palomino (University of Oxford), Juan G. Rodríguez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid),
Raquel Sebastian (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Discussant: Sang Yoon (Tim) Lee, Queen Mary University of London
The Impact of COVID-19 on Household Economic Dynamics in Kenya, Burkina Faso, DRC, and
Nigeria
Elizabeth Gummerson (Johns Hopkins University), Carolina Cardona (Johns Hopkins University),
Philip Anglewicz (Johns Hopkins University), Scott Radloff (Johns Hopkins University)
Discussant: Enrica Croda, Ca' Foscari University of Venice
How Should Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic Differ in the Developing World?
Titan Alon (University of California San Diego), Minki Kim (University of California San Diego),
David Lagakos (University of California San Diego), Mitchell VanVuren (University of California
San Diego)
Discussant: Edwine Barasa, Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
9Update on iHEA Special Interest Groups
Health Preference Research SIG mourns the loss of Sandra Sosa-Rubi
Sandra G. Sosa-Rubí, PhD, died on March 6, 2021 at
Medica Sur Hospital in Mexico City, losing a long and
valiantly-fought battle against breast cancer. She was a
powerhouse in applied health and behavioral economics
and HIV; and one of the few prominent female health
economists working outside of high-income countries. Dr.
Sosa-Rubí was a Researcher/Professor of Health
Economics and Coordinator of the Master’s Degree in
Health Economics at the National Institute of Public
Health (INSP) in México. Her areas of academic expertise
were health systems, health policy, impact evaluation,
health economics, behavioral economics. She
collaborated in national-level research projects to
measure the impact of social programs such as
Oportunidades and Seguro Popular, and analyze welfare effects, financial impact, behavioral
change, changes in health services access and coverage as well as equity effects.
She obtained her doctorate in Economics at University of York, UK in 2006; with previous
master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics from Center for Research and Teaching in
Economics (CIDE) and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Her scholarship
focused on applied health and behavioral economics with special emphasis on maternal and
adolescent health, vulnerable populations, and HIV prevention and treatment. She wrote more
than 50 scientific articles that appeared in public health and health economics journals, as well
as several book chapters, including “Economic Incentives, Risk Behaviors, and HIV” in the Oxford
Encyclopedia of Health Economics (2020), and “Male Sex Workers: HIV Risk and Behavioral
Economics” for the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Prostitution (2016). She had
considerable experience in the domain of conditional economic incentives, particularly
regarding sexual and reproductive health. Her approach has been different from many in that
she focused on populations at the highest risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted
infections. Rather, than relying on secondary data analysis or focusing on low-risk heterosexual
populations, Dr. Sosa-Rubí emphasized primary data collection and experimental approaches in
groups at high risk, including men who have sex with men and male sex workers. This work led
to several publications, including a comprehensive review entitled, “Conditional economic
incentives to improve HIV prevention and treatment in low-income and middle-income
countries” published in Lancet HIV (2019). Most recently, as the current pandemic advanced,
she pivoted towards a new line of research applying her skills to document disparities for
diabetic patients in terms of Covid-19 incidence and treatment.
She is survived by her partner Silvio Simonit (also a PhD Economist from University of York) and
their two young daughters.
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
10African Regional News
The African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA), in partnership with the World
Health Organization – Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO), is planning to host a practical
virtual scientific writing workshop and mentorship programme between April and May 2021.
This event is aimed at capacity building for AfHEA’s members, leading up to the forthcoming
AfHEA’s scientific conference in March 2022.
The proposed scientific writing workshop and mentorship programme is themed: “Research to
support equitable health systems in sub-Saharan Africa”. The programme’s outputs include (i)
mentorship and building the capacity of early to mid-career African researchers in health
economics, health policy and health systems, and (ii) a completed scientific journal paper to be
submitted for publication in a special issue of a reputable scientific journal to be identified
jointly by AfHEA and the WHO-AFRO. The virtual activities, funded by the WHO-AFRO, will run
over an extended period to accommodate participants, especially with the current realities
created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The capacity building component involves mentorship
activities with individual participants paired with established researchers to guide them through
writing and completing a publishable research paper.
Click Here for more information.
Welcome to New Members of the iHEA
Management Team
There have been a number of changes in the Managing Matters team that provide support to
iHEA. The key members of iHEA’s Association Management and Events teams are:
Albert Lin – Association Manager
Albert is responsible for providing support to the Board, Committees and
our Special Interest Groups and other key association management tasks.
He will also provide support on strategic planning and be integrally
involved in the implementation of key iHEA activities outside of the
biennial Congress, such as the mentoring program and the capacity
strengthening initiative. He is contactable on ihea@healtheconomics.org
Karishma Lobo – Membership and Marketing Manager
Karishma is responsible for the monthly iHEA newsletter, social media
and other communications and manages the website and our webinar
program. She is also the person to contact about any membership
issues. She is contactable on membership@healtheconomics.org
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
11Lorien McMahon – Senior Event Planner
Lorien is the overall coordinator of the 2021 iHEA Congress and is
responsible for managing the planning of the event. She supports the
Scientific Committee in developing the program and will manage the
virtual congress implementation. Lorien is contactable on
lorien@healtheconomics.org
Molly Schaefler – Event Planner
Molly is the main point of contact for presenters and delegates for the
2021 iHEA Congress. She is contactable on events@healtheconomics.org
and is overseeing the abstract management and registration
processes. Molly also manages all communication around the congress.
Career Center
The iHEA Career Center allows you to post your job openings and fellowships, find potential candidates
and search new positions. It is open to members and non-members alike. We do hope that you utilize
this tool and should you have any questions, please reach out to jobs@healtheconomics.org.
Stay Connected
ihea@healtheconomics.org | www.healtheconomics.org
12You can also read
