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Journal of the National Cancer... Jul 2022In the past 2 decades, the demand for information on health economics research to guide health care decision making has substantially increased. Studies have provided... (Review)
Review
In the past 2 decades, the demand for information on health economics research to guide health care decision making has substantially increased. Studies have provided evidence that eliminating or reducing tobacco use; eating a healthy diet, including fruit and vegetables; being physically active; reducing alcohol consumption; avoiding ultraviolet radiation; and minimizing exposure to environmental and occupational carcinogenic agents should substantially reduce cancer incidence in the population. The benefits of these primary prevention measures in reducing cancer incidence are not instantaneous. Therefore, health economics research has an important role to play in providing credible information to decision makers on the health and economic benefits of primary prevention. This article provides an overview of health economics research related to primary prevention of cancer. We addressed the following questions: 1) What are the gaps and unmet needs for performing health economics research focused on primary prevention of cancer? 2) What are the challenges and opportunities to conducting health economics research to evaluate primary prevention of cancer? and 3) What are the future directions for enhancing health economics research on primary prevention of cancer? Modeling primary prevention of cancer is often difficult given data limitations, long delays before the policy or intervention is effective, possible unintended effects of the policy or intervention, and the necessity of outside expertise to understand key inputs or outputs to the modeling. Despite these challenges, health economics research has an important role to play in providing credible information to decision makers on the health and economic benefits of primary prevention of cancer.
Topics: Economics, Medical; Humans; Neoplasms; Primary Prevention; Tobacco Use; Ultraviolet Rays
PubMed: 35788376
DOI: 10.1093/jncimonographs/lgac014 -
Social Science & Medicine (1982) Nov 2015Given its societal importance, unpaid work should be included in economic evaluations of health care technology aiming to take a societal perspective. However, in... (Review)
Review
Given its societal importance, unpaid work should be included in economic evaluations of health care technology aiming to take a societal perspective. However, in practice this does not often appear to be the case. This paper provides an overview of the current place of unpaid work in economic evaluations in theory and in practice. It does so first by summarizing recommendations regarding the inclusion of unpaid labor reported in health economic textbooks and national guidelines for economic evaluations. In total, three prominent health economic text-books were studied and 28 national health economic guidelines. The paper, moreover, provides an overview of the instruments available to measure lost unpaid labor and reports on a review of the place of unpaid labor in applied economic evaluations in the area of rheumatoid arthritis. The review was conducted by examining methodology of evaluations published between 1 March 2008 and 1 March 2013. The results of this study show that little guidance is offered regarding the inclusion of unpaid labor in economic evaluations in textbooks and guidelines. The review identified five productivity costs instruments including questions about unpaid work and 33 economic evaluations of treatments for rheumatoid arthritis of which only one included unpaid work. The results indicate that unpaid work is rarely included in applied economic evaluations of treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, despite this disease expecting to be associated with lost unpaid work. Given the strong effects of certain diseases and treatments on the ability to perform unpaid work, unpaid work currently receives less attention in economic evaluations than it deserves.
Topics: Absenteeism; Arthritis, Rheumatoid; Biomedical Technology; Cost-Benefit Analysis; Economics, Medical; Efficiency; Humans; Salaries and Fringe Benefits; Work
PubMed: 26421997
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.09.008 -
Lancet (London, England) May 2017
Topics: Economics; Economics, Medical
PubMed: 28513446
DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)31210-2 -
PloS One 2022The achievement of global and national health goals requires a health workforce that is sufficient and trained. Despite considerable steps in medical education, the...
The achievement of global and national health goals requires a health workforce that is sufficient and trained. Despite considerable steps in medical education, the teaching of management, health economics and research skills for medical doctors are often neglected in medical curricula. This study explored the opinions and experiences of medical doctors and academic educationalists on the inclusion of management, health economics and research in the medical curriculum. A qualitative study was undertaken at four medical schools in Southern Africa (February to April 2021). The study population was medical doctors and academic educationalists. Semi-structured interviews with purposively sampled participants were conducted. All interviews were recorded and professionally transcribed. Constructivist grounded theory guided the analysis with the use of ATLAS.ti version 9.1.7.0 software. In total, 21 academic educationalists and 28 medical doctors were interviewed. In the first theme We know, participants acknowledged the constraints of medical schools but were adamant that management needed to be taught intentionally and explicitly. The teaching and assessment of management and health economics was generally reported to be ad hoc and unstructured. There was a desire that graduates are able to use, but not necessarily do research. In comparison to management and research, support for the inclusion of health economics in the curriculum was insignificant. Under We hope, educationalists hoped that the formal clinical teaching will somehow instil values and best practices of management and that medical doctors would become health advocates. Most participants wished that research training could be optimised, especially in relation to the duration of allocated time; the timing in the curriculum and the learning outcomes. Despite acknowledgement that management and research are topics that need to be taught, educationalists appeared to rely on chance to teach and assess management in particular. These qualitative study findings will be used to develop a discrete choice experiment to inform optimal curricula design.
Topics: Humans; Education, Medical, Undergraduate; Curriculum; Schools, Medical; Qualitative Research; Economics, Medical
PubMed: 36269759
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0276512 -
Neurology Aug 2019Medical education is the understanding of how medical knowledge is taught and practiced and encompasses not just medical students, but resident trainees, colleagues, and...
Medical education is the understanding of how medical knowledge is taught and practiced and encompasses not just medical students, but resident trainees, colleagues, and the community. While there is a growing emphasis in medicine on "clinician-educators," neurology training has only slowly developed formal opportunities in medical education. Here we highlight the current opportunities in residency and beyond, and explore options for further medical education infrastructure within neurology.
Topics: Curriculum; Economics, Medical; Education, Medical; Education, Medical, Graduate; Internship and Residency; Neurology
PubMed: 31383802
DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000007904 -
Journal of the Medical Library... Apr 2019Entrepreneurship and innovative product design in health care requires expertise in finding and evaluating diverse types of information from a multitude of sources to...
OBJECTIVE
Entrepreneurship and innovative product design in health care requires expertise in finding and evaluating diverse types of information from a multitude of sources to accomplish a number of tasks, such as securing regulatory approval, developing a reimbursement strategy, and navigating intellectual property. The authors sought to determine whether an intensive, specialized information literacy training program that introduced undergraduate biomedical engineering students to these concepts would improve the quality of the students' design projects. We also sought to test whether information literacy training that included active learning exercises would offer increased benefits over training delivered via lectures and if this specialized information literacy training would increase the extent of students' information use.
METHODS
A three-arm cohort study was conducted with a control group and two experimental groups. Mixed methods assessment, including a rubric and citation analysis, was used to evaluate program outcomes by examining authentic artifacts of student learning.
RESULTS
Student design teams that received information literacy training on topics related to medical entrepreneurship and health care economics showed significantly improved performance on aspects of project performance relevant to health care economics over student design teams that did not receive this training. There were no significant differences between teams that engaged in active learning exercises and those that only received training via lectures. Also, there were no significant differences in citation patterns between student teams that did or did not receive specialized information literacy training.
CONCLUSIONS
Information literacy training can be used as a method for introducing undergraduate health sciences students to the health care economics aspects of the medical entrepreneurship life cycle, including the US Food and Drug Administration regulatory environment, intellectual property, and medical billing and reimbursement structures.
Topics: Biomedical Engineering; Economics, Medical; Entrepreneurship; Humans; Information Literacy; Information Seeking Behavior; Program Evaluation; Teaching
PubMed: 31019384
DOI: 10.5195/jmla.2019.577 -
Journal of the National Cancer... Jul 2022With increased attention to the financing and structure of healthcare, dramatic increases in the cost of diagnosing and treating cancer, and corresponding disparities in...
With increased attention to the financing and structure of healthcare, dramatic increases in the cost of diagnosing and treating cancer, and corresponding disparities in access, the study of healthcare economics and delivery has become increasingly important. The Healthcare Delivery Research Program (HDRP) in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) was formed in 2015 to provide a hub for cancer-related healthcare delivery and economics research. However, the roots of this program trace back much farther, at least to the formation of the NCI Division of Cancer Prevention and Control in 1983. The creation of a division focused on understanding and explaining trends in cancer morbidity and mortality was instrumental in setting the direction of cancer-related healthcare delivery and health economics research over the subsequent decades. In this commentary, we provide a brief history of health economics and healthcare delivery research at NCI, describing the organizational structure and highlighting key initiatives developed by the division, and also briefly discuss future directions. HDRP and its predecessors have supported the growth and evolution of these fields through the funding of grants and contracts; the development of data, tools, and other research resources; and thought leadership including stimulation of research on previously understudied topics. As the availability of new data, methods, and computing capacity to evaluate cancer-related healthcare delivery and economics expand, HDRP aims to continue to support this growth and evolution.
Topics: Economics, Medical; Health Resources; Health Services Research; Humans; Medicine; National Cancer Institute (U.S.); Neoplasms; United States
PubMed: 35788380
DOI: 10.1093/jncimonographs/lgac003 -
Medicina Clinica Sep 2022
Topics: Economics, Medical; Humans
PubMed: 35636989
DOI: 10.1016/j.medcli.2022.04.001 -
Journal of Medical Economics Nov 2021
Topics: Asia; Developing Countries; Economics, Medical; Humans; Outcome Assessment, Health Care
PubMed: 34859736
DOI: 10.1080/13696998.2021.2014164 -
Patient and Public Involvement in Health Economics Modelling Raises the Need for Normative Guidance.PharmacoEconomics Jul 2023Patient and public involvement in health economics research and health technology assessment has been increasing for some time; however, patient and public involvement...
Patient and public involvement in health economics research and health technology assessment has been increasing for some time; however, patient and public involvement in health economics modelling is a more recent development. One reason to advance this type of involvement is to help appropriately manage the social and ethical value judgements that are required throughout model development and interpretation. At the same time, patient and public involvement in health economics modelling raises numerous practical and philosophical issues that invite discussion and debate. Recently, we attended an engagement event which invited patients, members of the public, researchers and decision-makers to discuss some of these issues. One priority that emerged in the discussion was to develop normative guidance for patient and public involvement in health economics modelling. In this article, we reflect on this goal from our own perspective, focusing on why normative guidance is needed and what questions that guidance should answer.
Topics: Economics, Medical; Models, Economic
PubMed: 37106229
DOI: 10.1007/s40273-023-01274-7