Prize-winning article on equity methods in health economic evaluation

Posted on 23 April 2018

'Using cost-effectiveness analysis to address health equity concerns' Authored by Richard Cookson, Andrew Mirelman, Susan Griffin, Miqdad Asaria, Bryony Dawkins, Ole Norheim, Stéphane Verguet and Anthony Culyer.

Value in Health journal cover

The 2018 ISPOR ‘Value in Health Paper of the Year Award’ has been won by Richard Cookson, as lead author of an article co-authored by colleagues from CHE (Andrew Mirelman, Susan Griffin, Miqdad Asaria and Tony Culyer), Leeds (Bryony Dawkins), Bergen (Ole Norheim) and Harvard (Stephane Verguet). This award "promotes quality research, originality, and utility in health care decisions for articles published in Value in Health".

The article is a practical guide to equity methods in health economic evaluation, entitled 'Using cost-effectiveness analysis to address equity concerns'. It aims to help analysts provide more useful information on who gains and who loses from health policies, and to analyse policy trade-offs between cost-effectiveness and health equity. There have been substantial methodological advances in this field in recent years, which researchers at CHE and elsewhere have started to develop into practical tools for economic evaluation. This article summarises the state-of-the-art in a manner accessible to non-specialists.

Richard Cookson said, "I'm delighted the ISPOR committee has awarded this prize for 'utility in health care decisions' to a paper on equity methods. Despite decades of methodological research on equity, applied cost-effectiveness studies still rarely provide decision makers with useful information about equity impacts and trade-offs. This prize is a signal that equity methods are finally coming of age, and are ready for routine application to inform decision making".