No images? Click here
Public health and social measures (PHSM) are critical to reducing or halting the transmission of an infectious disease, especially when pharmaceutical interventions are not yet available or not widely accessible. PHSM include both actions that individuals can take (e.g. increased personal hygiene, physical distancing, mask wearing and limiting physical contacts) and public health and social policies mandated by authorities (e.g. closure of schools and businesses, mobility restrictions, banning mass gatherings, etc).
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, PHSM have been applied at an unprecedented scale and timespan globally. Despite the growing evidence that these measures significantly reduce COVID-19 transmission and deaths, some PHSM can have adverse and unintended effects on the general welfare of society and individuals. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted that countries need a better understanding of the broader health, social and economic effects of PHSM to be able to make evidence-informed decisions about their implementation during future health emergencies.
A new group of models called “integrated economic-epidemiological models” reflect the close interdependence of public health outcomes and the economy and the concern of policy makers to balance lives and livelihoods. These integrated models promise to help overcome the key challenge of fragmented and siloed research on the pandemic and better inform policy decisions. The drive for integration comes from both sides. Economists have rapidly escalated their attempts to incorporate epidemiological models in their analyses. However, while the basic mathematical principles of dynamic transmission models are deceptively simple, it is an enormous endeavour to obtain realistic estimates from these models. Likewise, epidemiological models often ignore broader economic considerations or incorporate them in a simplistic manner as an add-on or disjointed calculation.
This joint webinar of the World Health Organization, the Jameel Institute and MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis of Imperial College London focuses on recent developments in integrated econ-epi modelling. The objectives are to give an overview of the unique features of integrated econ-epi models, reflect how they have been used in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, discuss existing shortcomings and areas where improvements are needed, and lastly, future applications of econ-epi models to support the pandemic preparedness agenda.
INTRODUCTION
Edith Patouillard is a senior health economist in the WHO Department of Health Systems governance and Financing where she leads on the theme of health and the economy. She has lived and worked in several countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where she supported Ministries of Health in the impact and economic evaluations of public health policies. Prior to WHO, she worked at the LSHTM. She holds a master’s of Science in Economics and Management of Health Systems and a PhD in Health Economics, and completed undergraduate training in International Economic.
PRESENTERS
Katharina Hauck is a Professor in Health Economics and Deputy Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (Jameel Institute), School of Public Health, Imperial College London. She is a health economist with specialization in the economics of infectious diseases. Her research comprises of the micro- and macro-economic impacts of endemic infectious diseases and epidemics, the economics of malaria elimination, cost-effectiveness analysis, health system strengthening, and the role of individual behavior in infectious disease transmission. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of York, UK.
Patrick Doohan is a mathematical modeller at the Jameel Institute, based in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. His research is at the intersection of infectious disease epidemiology and health economics, specifically the development and application of integrated epidemiological-economic models. His current topics of interest include, among others, vaccine modelling and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on lower- and middle-income countries. Patrick holds PhD and MSc degrees from Imperial College London and HDip and BA degrees from University College Dublin.
Matteo Pianella is an economist based at the Department of Infectious Diseases Epidemiology at Imperial College London. His research interests lie in economics, health economics and epidemiology and he is currently working on the design of optimal strategies for malaria eradication, the political economy of malaria eradication and the macroeconomy of the COVID-19 pandemic. His background is in economics and philosophy, having obtained a MRes degree in economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), and a MSc and BA degrees in economics and political science and philosophy from the University of Milan.
CHAIR
Michele Cecchini is responsible for the OECD programme of work on Public Health. His research interests include priority setting and programme evaluation of policies influencing population health. Michele holds a position of adjunct professor in applied health economics at the School of Public Health of the University of Siena. He has also served as a temporary advisor to a number of governments and international agencies, including WHO, IARC, EC and the World Bank. Michele holds a degree in Medicine and Surgery, a master’s degree in health policy, planning and financing and a PhD from Imperial College London.
DISCUSSANTS
Rosemarie Edillon is presently the Undersecretary for National Development Policy and Planning at the National Economic and Development Authority of the Philippines. She chairs the Task Group on Recovery under the National Task Force against COVID19; she also chairs the Technical Working Group on Anticipatory and Forward Planning and a member of the sub-TWG on Data Analytics under the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Edith holds a PhD in Economics, an MA degree in Economics and an MS degree in Statistics.
Gesine Meyer-Rath is a medical doctor and health economist working on the economics of infectious disease interventions in low- and middle-income settings. She is a Research Associate Professor in the Department for Global Health, Boston University, US, and works at the Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research focus lies on modelling methods for economic evaluation, most recently of HIV and COVID-19 interventions, and translating research into recommendations for public policy. She holds a PhD in Health Economics as well as a MD/PhD in Physiology.
Andrew Burns is the World Bank’s Global Lead for Macroeconomic Modelling. Previously he worked as Manager and lead author of the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report. Before the World Bank, Andrew was with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where he supervised and wrote the OECD's Economic Surveys for the Czech Republic, France, Hungary and Poland. Earlier he worked at the Economic Council of Canada where he wrote on labor market and macroeconomic issues. Andrew holds degrees from the University of Manitoba and McGill University in Canada.
WRAP UP
Tessa Tan-Torres Edejer is the head of the Unit on Economic Evaluation and Analysis under the Department of Health systems governance and financing (HGF) in Geneva, Switzerland. For more than 20 years, she has been primarily responsible for leading the work on defining the cost-effectiveness of health interventions (WHO-CHOICE) and the costs of scaling up and reaching health goals and targets. Ongoing work revolves around, among others, fair resource allocation, priority setting and health technology assessment. Tessa is also currently Director (acting) of the HGF Department.
This session was the 14th of the HGF Webinar series.
Want to discover the previous ones?
Visit our page:
