Important Information on 2025 IHEA Congress
Registration
- All presenters with accepted abstracts are reminded to register by April 4th to ensure inclusion on the congress program
- Benefit from early-bird rates by registering by April 30th
- Note that the combined cost of a two-year IHEA membership and the member congress registration fee is lower than the non-member registration fee!
Pre-congress session program
Plan to arrive in Bali early to participate in the exciting pre-congress session program – see the overview of these sessions on the congress webpage here (see Program section)
Visa information
While most delegates will be able to enter Bali on a tourist visa, some will require a business or other visa. Please carefully review the information on the congress webpage (see bottom of the Onsite Participation section).
Delegates travelling with children
The Westin has a Kids Club for children of 4 years and older. This is complimentary for delegates staying at the Westin and Rp700,000 per child per day for those not staying at the Westin.
We will try to identify baby-sitting services for those requiring this, and will provide a lactation room in the conference center.
IHEA President Spotlights Visa Discrimination
IHEA President, Kara Hanson, was invited by Nature to contribute an article about the impact of visa discrimination on global scientific engagement. The article, published earlier this month, draws on IHEA’s experience of having to relocate the 2025 Congress to enable the participation of all interested health economists, irrespective of their country of origin. The full article can be downloaded here.
Consider Donating to Help Send More Students to the 2025 IHEA Congress
We believe that advancing the field of health economics requires supporting the next generation of scholars. However, for many students, attending an international conference is financially out of reach.
While we secure grants to assist delegates from low- and middle-income countries, there is no funding available to help full-time students from high-income countries—students who have worked hard to have their research accepted for presentation at the 2025 IHEA Congress in Bali but lack institutional support to attend.
By making a contribution, you’ll directly support a student’s participation in this critical global gathering. Your donation—no matter the amount—will help cover registration fees, travel, and accommodation, ensuring these students can share their research, gain valuable experience, and build connections that will shape their careers.
Donate today and invest in the future of health economics. You will also receive a tax receipt for your donation. After the Congress, we’ll share how your generosity made a difference.
If you would like to donate, you can do so here.
Thank you for your support!
Special Issue of Social Science and Medicine: 2023 IHEA Congress papers published
In collaboration with Social Science and Medicine (SSM), IHEA issued a call for papers presented at the 2023 IHEA Congress to be published in a Special Issue, with the theme: “Equity in health care and health: The contribution of health economics”. We are pleased to announce that all nine papers selected for inclusion have now been published, along with an Editorial, and can be accessed here.
Resonating with the theme of the opening plenary, “Diversifying Health Economics”, the Special Issue features articles with a diverse range of topics, geographic settings and methods, written by researchers at different career stages and from countries at different income levels. The full list of articles, with their links, are:
Equity in Health Care and Health: Contributions from Health Economics
John Cullinan, Paula Lorgelly
Through Their Eyes: Defining ‘good life’ in dementia for health economics and outcomes research
Irina Kinchin, Erin Boland, Iracema Leroi, Joanna Coast
Socioeconomic inequality in the outcomes of a psychological intervention for depression for South Africans with a co-occurring chronic disease: A decomposition analysis
Amarech Obse, Susan Cleary, Rowena Jacobs, Bronwyn Myers
Balancing the scales? Evaluating the impact of results-based financing on maternal health outcomes and related inequality of opportunity in Zimbabwe
Marshall Makate
Equity in national healthcare economic evaluation guidelines: Essential or extraneous?
Tuba Saygın Avşar, Xiaozhe Yang, Paula Lorgelly
Did the COVID-19 pandemic reshape equity in healthcare use in Europe?
Louis Arnault, Florence Jusot, Thomas Renaud
Impact of medical insurance integration on reducing urban-rural health disparity: Evidence from China
Yingqian Tang, Rong Fu, Haruko Noguchi
Can financial incentives improve access to care? Evidence from a French experiment on specialist physicians
Aimée Kingsada
Horizontal and vertical equity and public subsidies for private health insurance in the U.S.
Paul D. Jacobs, Steven C. Hill
Economic outcomes among microfinance group members receiving community-based chronic disease care: Cluster randomized trial evidence from Kenya
M. Wilson-Barthes, J. Steingrimsson, Y. Lee, D.N. Tran, … O. Galárraga
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the following people for making this special issue a reality:
- The guest editors for the Special Issue: John Cullinan (University of Gallway) and Paula Lorgelly (University of Auckland/Waipapa Taumata Rau);
- The SSM Senior Editors for Health Economics: Joanna Coast (University of Bristol) and Richard Smith (University of Exeter); and
- The SSM Senior Editor for Health Policy: Winnie Yip (Harvard University).
IHEA has agreed with SSM to publish a Special Issue of papers from the 2025 IHEA Congress. More details will be made available in future newsletters, and a call for expressions of interest will be released soon.
IHEA Student Prize Winners Announced
The IHEA Student Prize is to recognize excellence by students in the field of health economics. It was first awarded in 1999 and biennially thereafter to coincide with the IHEA congress. As from 2017, there has been a standing Student Paper Prize committee to award this prize annually to the Masters or Doctoral student paper judged as best in the award year. Each year the Committee considers submitted papers using similar criteria to that of the long-established Arrow Award. Submissions for the 2025 Prize were received from students from Australia, Botswana, Canada, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malaysia, Myanmar, Netherlands, Sweden, Thailand, UK, USA and Vietnam.
The 2025 First Prize, is jointly awarded to: Marie-Anne Boujaoude (Doctoral student from Lebanon, studying at Melbourne University) and Hidetoki Nakayama (Doctoral student from Japan, studying at University of Osaka).
Marie-Anne Boujaoude’s paper is entitled: “Aversion to income, ethnic, and geographic related health inequality: Evidence from Australia”. This study provides the first Australian equity weights derived from public preferences (n=2400), quantifying the degree of health inequality aversion by income group, Indigenous status, and geographic location. The findings suggest that most Australians are willing to prioritize health gains to disadvantaged groups. These empirically derived inequality aversion parameters can support more equity-informative economic evaluation through Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (DCEA).
Hidetoki Nakayama’s paper is entitled: “The Causal Link from Vaccination Policy to Government Trust: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis”. This paper examines whether policy can enhance public trust in government. Using Japan’s age-based COVID-19 vaccination policy, we conduct a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal impact of receiving a vaccine on trust in government. Our findings suggest the importance of policy benefits in building public trust.
An honourable mention goes to the runner up, Deivis Guzman (Doctoral student from Colombia, studying at Johns Hopkins University) for the paper: “Timing Matters: The Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfer Payment Frequency on Dietary Choices Among Vulnerable Elderly Consumers”. Using nationally representative data and a multivalued treatment framework, this paper finds that monthly payments significantly improve diet quality and diversity relative to bi-monthly transfers. The results highlight the role of payment frequency in consumption smoothing and behavioral responses, offering new evidence to inform the design of social protection programs and advancing our understanding of how income timing shapes consumer choices.
The prize winners will present their papers at a special session of the 2025 IHEA Congress in Bali.
Many thanks to all those who submitted papers for consideration, and to the Prize Committee for all their hard work. The next call for submissions will be issued later in 2025.
Student Prize Committee
Chairperson: Tinna Laufey Ásgeirsdóttir (University of Iceland)
Co-Chair: Shiko Maruyama (Jinan University, Guangzhou, China)
Mehdi Ammi (Carleton University, Canada)
Ronelle Burger (Stellenbosch University, South Africa)
Michal Horný (Emory University, USA)
Brenda Gannon (University of Queensland, Australia)
Flavia Mori Sarti (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Jacob Novignon (Kwame Nkrumah University, Ghana)
Alfredo Paloyo (University of Wollongong, Australia)
May Ee Png (Oxford University, UK)
Timothy Powell-Jackson (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK)
Peter Sivey (University of York, UK)
Sally Stearns (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)
Raf van Gestel (Erasmus University, Netherlands)
The Student Prize is sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Health Economics.
Call for abstracts for 2026 ASSA/AEA meeting
The International Health Economics Association (IHEA), American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon) and the Health Economics Research Organization (HERO) are soliciting papers for presentation at the 2026 Allied Social Science Association (ASSA) annual meeting to be held from January 3-5, 2026 (Saturday, Sunday, Monday) in Philadelphia, PA. Based on submitted abstracts, papers will be selected for two IHEA-organized sessions, one ASHEcon-organized session and five HERO-organized sessions.
IHEA seeks abstracts for sessions that will focus primarily on internationally relevant topics in health economics, ASHEcon seeks abstracts on topics related to US-focused health economics topics, and HERO seeks abstracts on all issues of relevance to the health economics field.
Submission Guidelines
Anyone is eligible to submit an abstract. Abstract text must be 3,000 characters, including spaces, or less. You may submit a proposal for an organized session including four abstracts and discussants. Please note that there is no guarantee that all papers in a proposed organized session would necessarily be on the program. IHEA, ASHEcon and HERO are independent organizations each with affiliate status in the ASSA.
Note: As a condition of submission, if your paper gets into multiple ASSA/AEA areas, the submitter will withdraw from the others and prioritize these health economics sessions.
Please submit abstracts here by May 1, 2025
Call for contributions and save the date for the Immunization Economics IHEA 2025 Pre-Congress in Bali
Ahead of the International Health Economics Association (IHEA) World Congress in Bali, we are inviting contributions for oral presentations or suggestions for panel discussions at the Immunization Economics Pre-Congress taking place from July 19 – 20, 2025.
All submissions are welcome: ongoing research, presentations on methods, as well as proposals for panel discussions or training sessions. The closing date for submissions is the end of Friday April 4, 2025. We specifically welcome submissions on the below priority topics.
- Economics of reaching zero-dose children:
- Service delivery: comparing the cost and cost-effectiveness of different interventions aimed at reducing zero-dose prevalence, including integrated and mixed strategies, or novel approaches such as drone delivery or extended hours and weekend sessions
- Planning and identification: e.g. cost of GIS-enhanced microplanning, EIR for identification
- Demand: cost to households of seeking immunization services, cost-effectiveness and sustainability (incl. impact after cessation) of demand-side incentives across contexts, interventions to improve management of mild AEFIs
- Gender: leveraging local women’s organizations, engaging men and other household decision-makers, incentives specifically for women, empowering women health workers
- Community engagement: leveraging community volunteers, immunization champions, community and religious leaders, traditional birth attendants and midwives, improving and institutionalization community health worker programs, and school and pre-school-based approaches
- Financing: advocacy and making the economic case for vaccinating zero dose children and reaching missed communities, improving how zero dose priority areas are financed through e.g. budget advocacy or direct facility financing
- Sustainability, donor transitions, and integration: prioritization, equity tradeoffs, optimization of immunization delivery strategies or vaccine portfolios, sustainability of interventions, managing financial constraints in light of donor transitions and limited resources, prevention of backsliding in middle income countries, integration with nutrition and maternal and child health services, value of combination vaccines
- Delivering immunization in humanitarian and fragile settings, and high-risk polio areas: cost, sustainability and integration considerations of delivering routine immunization in complex settings, cost of drone vs regular delivery
- Economics of surveillance and outbreak response: cost and sustainability of recurrent outbreak responses
We also particularly encourage submissions from low- and middle-income countries. If the topic you propose is selected for the agenda, there will be (limited) funding available to sponsor your attendance. Submissions should be no longer than 500 words and submitted by the end of Friday April 4, 2025. If you have any questions, please email immunizationeconomics@thinkwell.global
CLICK HERE FOR SUBMISSION FORM
Since 2019, the Immunization Economics Special Interest Group at IHEA has organized a bi-annual Pre-Congress meeting to bring together academic institutions, NGOs, multinational organizations, policymakers, program managers and private sector representatives to discuss the latest research findings, methodological advancements, implications for policy and practice, facilitate peer-to-peer learning, foster partnerships, and align on research priorities relevant to support immunization programs in low- and middle-income countries.
Updates from our University Members
Using Discrete Choice Experiments in Health Short Course – University of Aberdeen
The Health Economics Research Unit (HERU) is now accepting bookings for its Using Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) in Health short course, which will be held in Aberdeen from 23rd to 25th September 2025.
Now in its 22nd year, this course focuses on the development and application of DCEs in health economics. Designed for researchers and policymakers, the course offers:
- A comprehensive explanation of the theoretical foundations of DCEs, supported by real-world examples.
- A step-by-step guide covering the design of DCEs, survey development, data collection, analysis, and result interpretation.
- Hands-on, interactive sessions and group work using the latest software for DCE design and analysis.
- An update on recent methodological advancements and challenges in applying DCEs to health economics.
For more information on the course content, program, and booking procedures, please visit the Using DCEs in Health Course page.
The registration fee covers accommodation, all course materials, lunches, and a course dinner.
Health Economics and Policy Evaluation ONLINE Course 2025 – University of Oxford
Join the Health Economics and Policy Evaluation ONLINE Course 2025, delivered by the University of Oxford. This intensive 2-day online course offers a comprehensive overview of health economics and policy assessment. Key topics: Health economics and policy evaluation, Advanced evaluation techniques (interrupted time series, panel data, instrumental variables, DIFF-DIFF), Agency problems and incentive structures in healthcare, Hospital competition and payment scheme impacts, and Economic evaluation methods
7th May 2025 – 9th May 2025 ONLINE
- Learn from leading experts
- Flexible, online format
- Global networking opportunities
Who Should Attend?
Students, healthcare professionals, policymakers, researchers, and analysts.
Upcoming Events
Optimal Policy in the Presence of Social Image Concerns: Experimental Evidence from Deworming
Date: April 7, 2025
Time: 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm UTC
Speaker: Anne Karing
Presented by: Economics of Risky Health Behaviors SIG
Efficiency and Affordability in Health Policy: Novel approaches to estimate cost-effectiveness thresholds and budget impact thresholds.
Date: April 24, 2025
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm UTC
Speakers: Professor Andres Pichon-Rivière, MD, MSc, PhD and Professor Federico Augustovski
Presented by: Health Systems’ Efficiency SIG
Advancing Global Evidence on Health Inequality Aversion
Date: April 29, 2025
Time: 9:00 am – 10:00 am UTC
Speakers: Professor Richard Cookson, Marie-Anne Boujaoude (PhD Student), Health Economists Kenneth Katumba and Kyoko Shimamoto, and Professor Sitanshu Sekhar Kar
Presented by: Equity Informative Economic Evaluation SIG
The dynamic economic benefits of early life health interventions- the role of skills and opportunities
Date: May 22, 2025
Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm UTC
Speaker: Professor Sonia Bhalotra
Presented by: Economics of Children’s Health & Wellbeing SIG
Stay tuned for more on upcoming IHEA webinars! You can view all 2025 events here.
Check out our website here.