Health Economics and Equity at Liverpool (HEEL)
The Health Economics and Equity at Liverpool (HEEL) research group’s vision is to provide evidence to improve the health and wellbeing of the population and strengthen health and social care systems through the study of efficient and equitable ways of providing health and social care.
What is health economics?
Health economics concerns the allocation of scarce health and care resources. There are typically not enough resources relative to need. Resources may include health and care budgets needed to provide treatments, equipment or hospital beds; workforce such as social workers, nurses or clinicians; and time spent investing in health by individuals. Allocating resources has two, at times competing, areas of priority – efficiency and equity. Efficiency is allocating resources such that outcomes from these resources are maximised (i.e. getting the most bang for your buck), whereas equity is allocating resources in a fair and equitable way. Often there is a trade-off between efficiency and equity and the importance of each can vary across health and care systems worldwide. These underlying concepts underpin the majority of health economics research.
The study of health economics is concerned with questions such as:
- Is a new intervention or policy a cost-effective (efficient) use of resources?
- How should health and care resources (budgets, workforce, services) be distributed across areas?
- What are the future needs for health and care resources?
- Should health and care be provided by the public or private sector?
- Are there inequalities in health and wellbeing and what are the causes and solutions?
Our aims
Informing and supporting local, national and international health and care systems in the commissioning and provision of health and care is fundamental to our research, as well as producing evidence on the cost-effectiveness of policies for Government and NGOs. We have the following aims:
- To inform and educate health and care systems, society, and the wider health economics discipline on efficient and equitable approaches to distribute scarce health and care resources.
- To evaluate the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, efficiency, affordability, and equity impacts of health and care policies and interventions, impacting on both non-communicable diseases and infectious diseases.
- To develop capacity in public and population health economics, taking a broad economic perspective including productivity, education, criminal justice etc.
- To generate research that is useful to, and actionable within, health and care systems.
To meet these aims HEEL:
- Provides a broad range of training in health economics to various audiences (patient and public representatives, the health and care system, academic researchers, and undergraduate and postgraduate students across disciplines).
- Collaborates with Higher Education Institutions, charities, Government, NGOs, health policy thinktanks, patient representatives and communities, and with health and care providers to conduct research that provides evidence needed to inform commissioning of health and care.
- Recognises the need for multidisciplinary research for rich, effective and accessible research, with a commitment to working across disciplines where possible.
- Contributes our expertise to leading national and international funding panels for health research.
The HEEL research group has a critical mass of expertise in the areas of Health Technology Appraisal (HTA), health econometrics, public health, social return on investment, cost-effectiveness and cost benefit analysis, policy evaluation, and health and health care inequalities.
