Battling Epidemics & Disparity with Modeling

This is the title of a paper published in Letters in Biomathematics with colleagues Anuj Mubayi, Jeff Sullivan, Oliver Diaz, Aditi Ghosh, Anamika Mubayi, Olcay Akman, and Phani Veeranki. The subtitle is: “The Coupled Dynamics of the COVID-19 Pandemic with Social Epidemics“. The abstract is below. Policymakers are under intense pressure to respond effectively to…

Using HEOR Methods to Reduce Health Inequalities

Join me tomorrow, 9/26, 12:00 PM EDT, as PRECISIONheor’s Jason Shafrin and Meena Venkatachalam discuss their recent blog commentary in the health policy journal Health Affairs on how novel methods of Cost-Effectiveness Analysis can be used to expand traditional value frameworks improve health outcomes for underserved communities. Moderated by Precision’s Kelly Wilder, there will be a live Q&A following the webinar.…

Should more flexible health care professional licensing continue after COVID-19?

Shirley Svorny and Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute have a long history (see here) of criticizing government licensing of physicians and other health care providers (e.g., nurse practitioners [NPs], nurses). Their proposed alternative has been to allow private entities to certify the competence of practitioners. They claim that private entities would increase competition by…

Do we spend too much on health care?

According to my post yesterday, it may seem like the answer is ‘yes’. The US spends by far the most money per person and the largest share of its economy on health care. While cross-country comparisons often grab the headlines, a New England Journal of Medicine Perspective by Katharine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra argues that…