At the end of the module, students should be able to:
Knowledge
- Explain the economic rationale for government intervention to improve public health;
- Explain public health problems and potential solutions using a health economics perspective;
- Explain the pros and cons of various methods to evaluate public health interventions.
Skills
- Argue for and apply a population perspective on health and healthcare issues and discussions;
- Apply analytical tools in health economics, in particular budget-impact analysis;
- Appropriately measure and value resource use and outcomes of public health interventions, depending on the perspective of the evaluation;
- Communicate effectively with various stakeholders, including governmental decision makers;
- Read, understand, summarize and effectively communicate about scientific literature on (public) health economic topics.
Attitude
- Reflect on the priority of prevention versus curation when it comes to funding healthcare interventions;
- Use insights from behavioral economics when developing or evaluating public health interventions.
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Remarkable progress has been made over the last century in enhancing population health through health technologies and public health interventions. This module will demonstrate how health economic analysis can facilitate the achievement of improvements in population health. The module will discuss (potential) market failures in the supply of health services and the need for (and potential effects of) government intervention. It will elaborate on the foundations for and use of public health economics as a way to inform resource allocation decisions.
In addition to the above, the module will familiarize students with various analytical approaches to evaluate public health interventions, such as BIA, SROI and PBMA. Measurement of resource use/costs and outcomes will be discussed, with a focus on the challenges specific to public health interventions. Students will perform a full budget impact analysis of a public health intervention and learn how to communicate their findings to external stakeholders (e.g. governmental decision makers). Finally, students will learn how insights from the field of behavioral economics can help when designing effective public health interventions. The course will prepare students for a future role as manager, policy maker and/or scholar in the healthcare field.
Students will help each other understand the relevant literature through a “journal club” approach.
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Project report (60% of grade), project presentation (10% of grade), peer feedback (10% of grade), and individual miniquizzes (20% of grade).
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