Minster December ‌‌‌‌

Health Economists' Study Group (HESG) Winter 2019

The Health Economists' Study Group Winter 2019 Meeting will be hosted by the Centre for Health Economics (CHE), University of York, from 7th -9th January 2019

Health Economists’ Study Group

The Health Economists’ Study Group (HESG) exists to support and promote the work of health economists. It was founded in 1972 and is the oldest organisation of its type in health economics and remains one of the largest. It is based in the UK, but this does not restrict its membership and interests. The group organises two HESG meetings per year, held at different locations, at which academic and policy-relevant papers are discussed. This meeting is the HESG Winter 2019 Meeting.

Meeting Format

The meeting is intended for health economists rather than more generally for people interested in health economics. Although the group has an academic function – the creation and transmission of knowledge and ideas – its members work in commercial, academic and government settings and its concerns are applied and policy orientated as well as theoretical.

The HESG meetings have a distinctive style and feel, attempting to maintain a study group atmosphere despite large numbers. All papers are pre-circulated and discussed in hour-long sessions using discussants rather than author presentations. The range of papers reflects the current balance of work, the largest categories being economic evaluation, health outcome measurement and the finance and organisation of health care. However, every meeting has papers on other recognisably traditional economics subjects such as consumer demand, industry behaviour (particularly hospitals and pharmaceutical companies) and behaviour of the labour market. HESG welcomes people from a variety of backgrounds at our meetings, but they are intended for economists and its ‘working language’ is economics.

Meeting Schedule

The HESG Winter Meeting will take place at The Principal York Hotel over three days from 12pm on 7th January to 1pm on 9th January 2019.‌

Monday 7th January - 12pm arrival and registration with lunch, afternoon sessions, evening drinks and buffet reception followed by the plenary session in tribute to Professor Alan Maynard (see details further below) in the Yorkshire Museum.
Tuesday 8th January - Full day of sessions with refreshments and lunch, evening dinner at the Merchant Adventurers Hall, York.
Wednesday 9th January - Morning sessions then close at 1pm with packed lunch.

Merchant adventurers hall

Accommodation is provided in the registration fee for two nights (Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th) at the meeting venue, The Principal York Hotel.

York is situated in the North East of England. York train station is a 2 minute walk from the meeting venue.

Pre-Conference Short-Course

Andrew Jones

Andrew’s course will focus on the principles and practical application of data visualization and statistical graphics and how these can enhance applied econometric analysis. Particular attention is devoted to methods for skewed and heavy-tailed distributions. Practical examples show how these methods can be applied to data on individual healthcare costs and health outcomes. As part of the HESG meeting, Professor Andrew Jones (Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York) will give a pre-conference short-course on ‘Data visualization and econometrics’ based on his recent paper published in Foundations and Trends in Econometrics.

The course will run from 9:30-12:30 on Monday 7^th January 2019 in the Principal York Hotel Events Centre. It is open to all HESG conference attendees and free of charge. Participants can register for the course as part of their conference registration.

Please note that accommodation for the night of Sunday 6th January is not included in the HESG registration fee. Therefore if you require accommodation on Sunday night please contact The Principal York Hotel Reservations team direct on 01904 653681 who will quote you a rate. Please inform them you are attending the University of York HESG Conference and that you are staying at the hotel on the Monday and Tuesday nights so they can ensure you are allocated the same room throughout your stay.

Alan Maynard Tribute Event and Plenary Discussion

Alan Maynard HESG

As part of the 2019 Winter meeting of the Health Economists’ Study Group, the University of York, including the Hull York Medical School, will host an event on the first evening 7th January, in tribute to Professor Alan Maynard, who sadly passed away in February 2018.

‌Alan’s influence on policy was remarkable. He contributed to radical reforms in the UK NHS, including ideas underpinning GP fundholding, the creation of NICE and various workforce contract changes. Well known for his unflinching approach, Alan would always tackle policy makers he believed to be paying insufficient attention to the creation and use of evidence. He persisted in ‘confusing them with facts’, never ducking from telling powerful people things they didn’t want to hear. Alan is greatly missed by his friends and family, generations of health economists he taught and those whose work he influenced both through his clear thinking based on sound economic principles and his mischievous sense of humour.

Translating knowledge into policy change, Alan commented, requires craftiness and tenacity. We can all learn from Alan’s persistent approach to improving the quality of health policy decisions and debate. The plenary discussion at the York HESG meeting is dedicated to Alan and will bring together policy makers and academics to discuss ‘how health economics can have more impact on policy’.

The following Plenary Speakers have been confirmed:

Professor Kalipso Chalkidou, Imperial College London; Director of Global Health Policy and Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development
Professor Brian Ferguson, Chief Economist, Public Health England
Becky Henderson, Senior Economist, Office of the Chief Analyst, Department of Health and Social Care
Danny Palnoch, Head of Medicines Analysis, Strategy and Policy, NHS England