A one day course run by the Health Economics Unit within the Centre for Health Policy and the Population Interventions (PI) Unit within the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics. The course provides an overview of how modelling, in both epidemiology and economics, can be used to inform policy decisions for public health, using COVID-19 and other examples as a case-studies.

Who is this course designed for?

Researchers, Policymakers, policy analysts interested in quantifying health gains and costs of prevention programmes that underpin decision making

Pre-requisites

There are no formal prerequisites, although we recommend that participants have previously attended our Introduction to Cost Effectiveness Analysis in Health course.

Course dates

• Key dates: 2024 course dates will be listed here once available or please contact us and we will advise once this information is available at health-economics@unimelb.edu.au
• Location: Online

Registration is at 8:45am for a 9:00am start with the formal program finishing around 1:30pm each day.

Course outline

Module 1: Overview of key epidemiological methods
Natalie Carvalho, Tony Blakely

Module 2: Health economics and economic evaluation methods
Natalie Carvalho, Patrick Abraham

Module 3: Bringing epidemiology and health economics together; and key methodological and policy considerations
Natalie Carvalho

Module 4: Case study of Preventative interventions
Tony Blakely

Module 5: Case Study of Scaling up across interventions using epidemiology and economics
Natalie Carvalho

Module 6: Case Study of COVID-19 and health economic modelling
Tony Blakely

Course lecturers

Senior Research Fellow Natalie Carvalho
Natalie Carvalho is a health economist whose research focuses primarily on developing evidence for priority-setting of health interventions in low- and middle-income countries using cost-effectiveness analysis. She has been involved in large-scale health economic evaluations – comparing 100s of possible interventions – that have been used to guide policy-making in settings such as Mexico and the Pacific. Natalie is a prior recipient of the University of Melbourne McKenzie Fellowship, a program established to attract outstanding doctoral graduates to the University. Her current research reviews methods and suggests new frameworks for incorporating budget impact and equity considerations into cost-effectiveness analysis, with a particular focus on vaccine-preventable diseases. Natalie holds an appointment with the Health Economics Unit, in the Centre for Health Policy and teaches several short courses in economic evaluation.

Professor Tony Blakely
Tony Blakely is an epidemiologist whose research has included pioneering the development of methods to link census and health data (New Zealand Census-Mortality Study; Cancer Trends).  
Since 2010 his research has focused on quantifying the benefits and costs of population interventions – ranging from salt reduction in food to taxes and subsidies on food; from education programmes using apps to screening programmes, and from palliation to treatments.  Tony has broken new ground by integrating epidemiology, health economics and ‘big’ health data repositories.  In 2020 he was able to rapidly deploy these skills and methods to the COVID-19 pandemic and has become a key contributor to modelling for Australasia on the impacts of various policy options – and a prominent explainer in media.  
Tony relocated full-time to the University of Melbourne (from Otago University, New Zealand) in 2019. He has authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications, including many that include critique, development, or application of epidemiological methods. Tony is well known for his enthusiastic and engaging style of presentation and teaching.

Mr Patrick Abraham
Patrick Abraham is a health economist and research assistant within the Health Economics Unit, and the Population Interventions Unit, within the School of Population and Global Health. His field of research involves economic evaluations and cost-effectiveness analysis in Australia, as well as low- and middle-income settings. Patrick also works with Tony and Natalie for COVID-19 response modelling for Victoria and overseas. He specialises in health cost and expenditure data analysis, while also assisting in developing decision-analytic models for cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses. He has a keen interest in the intersection of health economics and epidemiology. Patrick has a Master of Public Health at the University of Melbourne and tutors for subjects both within the Masters and Short Courses."

How much is it?

• $560
• Discounts for students and for people from low-to-middle income countries are available.  Request by emailing health-economics@unimelb.edu.au

IMPORTANT: This course can be cancelled if one month prior to the course date it doesn't have a minimum number of participants enrolled. Registration fees will be reimbursed