Course outline

This course focuses on methods for analysing equity in the distribution of health programme costs and effects and trade-offs between equity and cost-effectiveness. The first two days of this course provide an introduction and overview of how DCEA findings can be communicated and used in decision-making, and the next three days provide a more detailed technical understanding of how to do a DCEA.

Course objectives

Upon completion, participants will be able to:

• Understand and explain the basic concepts of DCEA
• Design a full or simplified DCEA study that provides useful information about the direction and magnitude of health equity impact in a specific decision-making context.
• Estimate distributions of health effects and health opportunity costs by adapting a standard cost-effectiveness model – either themselves or in collaboration with others.
• Calculate suitable summary measures of health inequality impact.
• Analyse trade-offs between reducing health inequality and cost-effectiveness.
• Communicate DCEA findings clearly, by producing suitably designed figures and tables and explaining to decision makers what they mean.

Click here for the course schedule

Course instructors

Prof Richard Cookson Professor, Centre for Health Economics, University of York Visiting Professor, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore 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.