The Vanderbilt Center for Health Economic Modeling and Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health recently hosted 11 international fellows to provide training in cost-effectiveness analysis and decision science to help them address public health issues in their home countries.
The trainees spent three weeks in intensive training at Vanderbilt University Medical Center under a curriculum developed by John Graves, PhD, professor of Health Policy and director of the center, along with other faculty in the Department of Health Policy.
The fellows, all government health economists in low- and middle-income African and Asian countries, each focused on a health policy concern important to their country. Using their newly acquired skills, they completed cost-effectiveness analyses covering topics from maternal health and diabetes screening to youth substance abuse. Two of the fellows’ projects were selected for presentations at the International Health Economics Association meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in mid-July.
“One of my proudest achievements during the fellowship was being able to design a cost-effectiveness model focused on reducing adolescent alcohol use in Uganda — a pressing public health issue back home,” said Roderick Atuhaire, principal policy analyst in the Uganda Ministry of Health.
“I returned to Uganda not just more skilled but more strategic, driven and determined. The program instilled a strong work ethic, a sharper analytical lens and a profound belief in the power of data to shape better futures.”
VUMC faculty who assisted with the development of the curriculum include Ashley Leech, PhD, assistant professor of Health Policy; Marie Martin, PhD, MEd, associate professor of Health Policy and assistant dean for Global Health Education; Jinyi Zhu, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of Health Policy; Christine Whitmore, PhD, research associate professor of Health Policy; and Grace Ratcliff, MPH, health policy data analyst.
The course included topics taught by visiting faculty from Harvard and Tufts universities, including Ankur Pandya, PhD, associate professor of Health Decision Science at Harvard; Zach Ward, PhD, assistant professor of Health Decision Science at Harvard; and Peter Neumann, director of the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health at the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies at Tufts Medical Center.
The course served as a capstone to previous training sessions led by VUMC faculty and staff in Southeast Asia, Africa, South America and Europe over the past two years. These trainings have been supported by funding from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative and in collaboration with Vital Strategies and the CDC Foundation.
“These workshops were the direct result of our collaborations, as well as an institutional and departmental commitment to establish and support the Center for Health Economic Modeling,” said Graves, who holds the Directorship in Public Health Research and Education. “In addition to the residential fellowship program, our team has now trained nearly 100 government health economists and has impacted the field more broadly by developing research and computational tools that address key challenges in conducting economic evaluations in limited-resource settings.”
