IHME Special Seminar – Dr. Nicholas L. Wilson Monday, October 15th 10:00AM-11:00AM IHME Board Room, 2301 5th Avenue, Suite 600 Seattle WA 98121
IHME is pleased to announce Dr. Nicholas L. Wilson’s job talk for IHME’s Assistant Professor global health economics search. Dr. Wilson completed his PhD in economics at Brown University and has spent the last three years teaching in a tenure track position in economics at Williams College. He is currently on sabbatical at the University of California, Berkeley.
Talk Title: “HIV Prevention at Scale: Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and Child Mortality in Zambia”
Talk Synopsis: Between 1996 and 2008 annual donor expenditure on HIV/AIDS increased from US$300 million to US$7.7 billion. However, HIV incidence has fallen only slightly and there is little evidence of a HIV prevention intervention succeeding at scale. This paper estimates the effect of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) expansion on child mortality in Zambia. My results suggest that the local introduction of PMTCT reduced infant mortality rates by approximately 2 percentage points, or roughly 20 percent. This appears to be the first causal evidence of a HIV prevention intervention succeeding at scale in Sub-Saharan Africa.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ IHME Special Seminar – Dr. Melanie Bertram Friday, October 19th 10:00AM-11:00AM IHME Board Room, 2301 5th Avenue, Suite 600 Seattle WA 98121
IHME is pleased to announce Dr. Melanie Bertram’s job talk for IHME’s Assistant Professor global health economics search. Dr. Bertram completed her PhD in health economics at The University of Queensland and has spent the last several years on the Disease Control Priority Network country study in South Africa at the University of Witatersrand in Johannesburg.
Talk Title: “Using economic evaluation for in-country priority setting: A view from the ground”
Talk Synopsis: Dr. Bertram will present her research on assessing the cost-effectiveness of drug and lifestyle intervention following opportunistic screening for pre-diabetes in primary care. Additionally, Dr. Bertram will present her research on reducing the sodium content of high-salt foods: effects on cardiovascular disease in South Africa. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
IHME Special Seminar – Dr. Hideki Higashi Monday, October 22nd 10:00AM-11:00AM IHME Board Room, 2301 5th Avenue, Suite 600 Seattle WA 98121
IHME is pleased to announce Dr. Hideki Higashi’s job talk for IHME’s Assistant Professor global health economics search. Dr. Higashi completed his PhD in health economics at The University of Queensland and has spent the last several years at the Centre for Burden of Disease and Cost-Effectiveness at the School of Population Health in Brisbane.
Talk Title: “Economic evaluation to inform health policy: multi-criteria decision analysis to set priorities for tobacco control policy in Vietnam”
Talk Synopsis: This research was developed in response to the request from the Ministry of Health, Vietnam, to provide policy makers with the evidence base in the negotiation processes of the then proposed Tobacco Harm Prevention Law. Three methodological approaches were employed: an economic evaluation; a policy analysis; and a multi-criteria decision analysis. The economic evaluation favoured population-level approaches over individual smoking cessation support, with pictorial health warning labels on cigarette packs and an increase of excise tax being the two most cost-effective interventions. Physician’s brief advice was the only cost-effective option among the individual approaches. However, if other considerations arising from the policy analysis were taken into account (e.g. stakeholders’ perceptions on socioeconomic implications) and the relative rankings rearranged by a novel ‘systematic ranking approach’, mass media campaigns stood out as the top priority while excise tax dropped to the lowest among the population-level approaches. In addition to evidence, political and socio-economic implications should be taken into account in setting priorities for health policy. Tobacco control policy in Vietnam should place population-level approaches at the highest priority, although some of the interventions, such as further tax increases, may be relegated to future considerations. Sequel: The Tobacco Harm Prevention Law passed the National Assembly on 18 June, 2012, which will enter into force on 1 May, 2013. At the job talk, the tobacco control strategies that have been incorporated into the law will be discussed and compared with the recommendations that have resulted from this research.
Daren Wade, MSW Director, Global Health Resource Center Clinical Instructor, Department of Global Health University of Washington Mary Gates Hall, Room 274B (and Harris Hydraulics, 315) Box 352800 Seattle, WA 98195 206-616-1159 Phone 206-685-8519 FAX website: http://globalhealth.washington.edu events listings: http://globalhealth.washington.edu/events
