Challenges and Limitations in Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

This webinar will start with a presentation by Prof. Milena Pavlova of her recently published systematic literature review of Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis. Prof. Pavlova will provide an overview of the literature highlighting the challenges and limitations related to the different steps needed to conduct the analysis. This work will then be discussed by Prof. Richard Cookson and Dr Mieraf Tadesse Tolla. We will ensure opportunities for general questions and discussion.

Milena Pavlova – Speaker Bio
Milena Pavlova is Professor of Health Economics and Equity at the Department of Health Services Research, CAPHRI school, Maastricht University. Her research interest is focused on healthcare financing, health insurance, formal and informal patient payments. She also studies inequalities, access and affordability problems in the health systems of high-, middle- and low-income countries. Next to research, she is also closely involved in teaching subjects such as health economics, financial management and health technological innovations.
Milena Pavlova is the chair of the working group on Economic Evaluation in Healthcare in Europe (EEHE) at the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER). In September 2013, she joined the Editorial Board of the journal BMC Health Services Research, where she is acting as a Senior Editorial Board Member. In 2016, she received the AXA Award for successful mid-career researcher.

Richard Cookson – Discussant Bio
Richard Cookson is a professor at the Centre for Health Economics, University of York. He has helped pioneer “equity-informative” methods of policy analysis, including distributional cost-effectiveness analysis; health equity indicators for healthcare quality assurance; and methods for investigating public concern for reducing health inequality; and is currently developing microsimulation methods for long-term childhood policy analysis. He has co-chaired international working groups on equity, worked in the UK Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit and served on various NHS advisory committees including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the NHS Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation.

Dr. Mieraf Tadesse Tolla – Discussant Bio
Mieraf Taddesse Tolla is a medical doctor by training and holds a Master degree in Public Health (2009) from the Braun Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel and a PhD (2018) from the University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. Her PhD dissertation focuses on financial risk protection, cost-effectiveness analysis, and extended cost-effectiveness analysis of prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases in Ethiopia. Mieraf did her postdoctoral fellowship (2018 – 2020) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to joining the PhD program, Mieraf served as a public health specialist at the World Bank country office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2010 – 2014) and worked as a general practitioner in various health facilities (2006 – 2008) both in urban and rural settings in Ethiopia. She is currently working as a senior researcher at the Addis Center for Ethics and Priority Setting based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her research interest covers priority setting in health care, financial risk protection and economics of undernutrition in children in low-income settings.