CERGAS Seminar "An economic perspective on health systems and policies: focusing on health and healthy ageing monetization"

The intersection of health economics and health systems is crucial for understanding how these systems can be better structured and managed. Health economics has a wide scope, which covers from health determinants and health measurement to planning, budgeting and monitoring health systems, as by foundational frameworks like Prof. Allan Williams' “plumbing” diagram. 

Health systems are all organizations, people, and actions with the primary objective of promoting, restoring, or maintaining health. Effective health planning and priority setting depend not only on assessing the performance of health systems but also on understanding how to enhance their effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. This is where economic evaluations play an essential role in guiding policymaking, helping stakeholders determine where and how investments should be made. 

Our work focuses on core concepts in economic evaluations, in particular of monetization of health: (1) monetizing health benefits, which places a financial value on health outcomes to inform decision-making; (2) discounting, which adjusts for the time value of health benefits and costs over time; and (3) application of economic evaluations in policy contexts, such as healthy ageing. This has been achieved by several efforts including the Horizon-Europe funded BEST-COST (“Burden of disease based methods for estimating the socio-economic cost of environmental stressors”) project, the Joint Action PreventNCD, and the collaboration with the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. As case studies, we have been applying our analyses to a wide range of health topics, including environmental stressors, healthy ageing, and mental health within the European Union/WHO European Region. By studying health systems from an economic perspective and assessing the policies designed to improve population health outcomes, we aim to integrate these two facets to create more sustainable, effective, efficient, and equitable health systems.

Speaker:

João Vasco Santos is a Public Health MD, Health Economist and Professor at Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto. With a PhD on Health Services Research and as a CINTESIS-RISE researcher, he is working mainly in bridging health economics with health systems and policies. WIth an impressive publication track on these topics, he has also been collaborating with the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and WHO. He is currently the President of EUPHA Public Health Economics section and PI of the Horizon Europe funded BEST-COST project and the Joint Action PreventNCDs. He is Editor of several journals, including Social Science & Medicine, SSM - Population Health, Archives of Public Health and BMC Public Health.

Link zoom:

https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/98232754942?pwd=R96ZbntYBujBxRTK69xCG7EpVmYbuu.1

Meeting ID: 982 3275 4942

Passcode: 889171

Lunch at the end of the meeting: for those willing to participate in person, click here before the 14th of November.