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2011 December 2011 Launch of Agenda issue on health Agenda is the quarterly journal of the ANU College of Business and Economics at The Australian National University. Launched in 1994, Agenda provides a forum for debate on public policy, mainly (but not exclusively) in Australia and New Zealand. All issues of the journal are available for download free of charge from ANU E Press. The second issue of the journal for 2011 (Vol.18 No.2) is devoted to health with ACERH staff co-authoring several papers in the issue. The Economic Society of Australia (Canberra Branch) is hosting a launch of this issue of the journal at a Health Economics Forum to be held from 5:30-7:30pm on 14 December in Canberra. This is a public event but non-members of the Canberra Branch of the Society will be charged a fee of $22 to attend. Click here for further information about the event including the program. (Postscript: Professor Peter Zweifel, a discussant at the launch of the health issue of Agenda, has made his slides available for download.)
November 2011 Emeritus Professor Peter Zweifel from the Department of Economics, University of Zurich, will be a Visiting Fellow at ACERH (ANU) from 21 November to 16 December. Professor Zweifel has published widely in health economics. The second edition of his well known textbook on the subject was published in 2009 (Zweifel P, Breyer F and Kifmann M, Health Economics, Springer, Boston) and he is currently completing, with his co-author Roland Eisen, a book on insurance economics which will be published by Springer in 2012. Further information on Professor Zweifel, including his considerable list of published works, is available in his online CV. ACERH is a participant in the annual ANU Summer Research Scholarship program. Miranda Blake is a recipient of a 2011-12 Summer Scholarship based at ACERH (ANU). She is currently working towards a Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics degree at Monash University. As a Summer Scholar working under the supervision of Dr Julie Smith, Miranda will be researching changes in marketing practices of infant formula manufacturers over the past 60 years in response to national commitments to protect and promote breastfeeding. Seminar @ University of London ACERH (ANU) PhD student, Mr Prem Sowa, gave a seminar at the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition (ECOHOST) in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, on 22 November on the topic 'Decentralisation in health care systems of Central Europe' (flyer). To download the slides from his presentation, click here. The Institute of Actuaries of Australia has organised an Accident Compensation Seminar in Brisbane on 20-22 November 2011. Several ACERH (UQ) researchers will be giving presentations at the seminar (presenting author's name underlined):
October 2011 Seminar @ Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Dr Francesco Paolucci from ACERH (ANU) gave a seminar in Economics and Finance Seminar Series in the QUT Business School on 28 October. The title of the seminar was 'Removing duplication in public/private health insurance in Australia: Opting-out with risk-adjusted subsidies?' (abstract). This is the title of a forthcoming paper, co-authored with Professor Jim Butler (ACERH ANU) and Professor Wynand van de Ven (Erasmus University) to be published in the journal Agenda. The Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) held an International Conference 'Step Up, Reach Out - developing an inclusive breastfeeding society' on 20-21 October at the National Convention Centre in Canberra. Dr Julie Smith, a Fellow at ACERH (ANU), gave four oral presentations and displayed a poster at the conference. The titles of these can be found in the conference program. One of these presentations provided an update on a current research project 'Working while breastfeeding: best practice strategies for workplaces', funded by an ARC Linkage grant (slides). In conjunction with the Conference, Julie and colleague Tracey Kelly (National Manager, Breastfeeding Friendly Workplaces) were interviewed for the Life Matters program on ABC Radio National on 20 October. To download the MP3 file of this interview, click here. Public comments on this interview can be read on the Life Matters web site. Seminars @ University of Zurich Professor Luke Connelly presented two seminars in the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich this month. The first presentation on 6 October was in the Applied Microeconomics Seminar series and was on the topic 'Chronic conditions and child health: Does income mediate?' (paper). The second presentation on 12 October was in the PhD Seminars in Microeconomics series on the topic 'Overinsurance'. Visiting PhD student from Denmark PhD student from the University of Southern Denmark, Mette Lundsby Jensen, arrived at ACERH (UQ) this month for a 6-month visit. She will be working on her PhD project looking at the cost effectiveness of screening for diabetes in general practice.
September 2011 Submission to Review of Access to Telecommunications Professor Luke Connelly from ACERH (UQ) made a submission to the Review of Access to Telecommunications by People with Disability, Older Australians and People Experiencing Illness this month. The Review is being conducted by the Australian Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. The submission is available on the Department's web site (submission). The related ACERH Research Reports (Nos 9 and 12) and nontechnical summaries of them, referred to in the submission, can be downloaded from the ACERH web site. Dr Francesco Paolucci will give a presentation at the Italian Association of Health Economics (Associazione Italiana di Economia Sanitaria) (AIES) Conference being held in Naples on 29-30 September (Call for Abstracts). The theme of the Conference is 'National rights, regional differences and federalism. The Italian Health Care System 150 Years after the Unification'. Dr Paolucci's presentation is entitled 'Evaluating preferences for equity and efficiency among national/regional health policy makers in Spain' (abstract). ANU Public Lecture by Professor Shmueli Switching by consumers between alternative providers is often regarded as a marker of the degree of competition in a market, and has been the subject of much discussion with regard to the banking industry in Australia in recent times. In this Public Lecture to be delivered at ANU on 13 September, Professor Shmueli from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and currently a Visiting Fellow at ACERH (ANU), will discuss patterns of switching between health insurance plans in Israel. Full details of this lecture are available on the ANU web site. Dr Paolucci interviewed on SBS (in Italian) Dr Francesco Paolucci has been interviewed by SBS radio twice recently, once on 18 August and again on ACERH (ANU) PhD student, Mr Prem Sowa, will be a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from 1 September until 30 November. Mr Sowa will be located in LSE Health. He will spend his time strengthening his understanding of health systems in eastern Europe, an area in which LSE Health possesses significant expertise. The financial support provided by the Office of the Vice-Chancellor at ANU, which has enabled Mr Sowa's visit to be undertaken, is gratefully acknowledged.
August 2011 Fifth International Whiplash Trauma Symposium The Fifth International Whiplash Trauma Symposium will be held in Lund, Sweden, on 27 August 2011. ACERH (UQ) PhD student Natalie Spearing will be giving the following presentation at the symposium:
Training session for AFPHM trainees Professor Jim Butler delivered a training session on basic health economics for ACT Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine (AFPHM) trainees on 26 August. To download the slides from this session, click here. Visit by Professor Shmueli, Hebrew University of Jerusalem On 16 August, ACERH (ANU) welcomed the arrival of Professor Amir Shmueli from Israel as a Visiting Fellow. Professor Shmueli received his MA and PhD in Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, where he currently serves as a professor of health economics. His research has focused on risk adjustment, equity, solidarity and health inequality, technology assessment in medicine and economic aspects of complementary and alternative medicine. Professor Shmueli has been intensively involved in Israeli health policy decisions, and has a long experience with global research networks. He was a member of the Stanford Center for Health Policy's global projects TECH and GHP, and was one of the founders of the Risk Adjustment Network (RAN) in 2000. Professor Shmueli will be visiting ANU until 30 September. Professor Jim Butler accepted an invitation to give a presentation at Pfizer Australia in Sydney on 16 August, in the company's 'Access to Medicines & Economic Affairs' staff seminar series. The title of his talk was 'Evaluating co-dependent technologies: corporate strategy and public policy'. The slides from his talk can be downloaded here. Seminar at Australian Centre for European Studies ACERH staff member Dr Francesco Paolucci will present a seminar at the Centre for European Studies at ANU, Canberra, on 11 August 2011. The seminar is entitled 'Competition and solidarity in European health insurance markets' (flyer). ARCS Reimbursement and Access Conference The 2011 ARCS Reimbursement and Access Conference, organised by ARCS Australia Ltd (previously the Association of Regulatory and Clinical Scientists), was held in Canberra on 1-2 August. Professor Jim Butler, in his capacity as Chair of the Evaluation Sub-Committee (ESC) of the Australian Government's Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC), spoke in a session in the MSAC stream at the conference on the role of ESC and its approach to providing advice to MSAC. Scholar from Denmark visits ACERH (UQ) Eskild Klausen Fredslund is a research associate from The Danish Institute for Health Services Research. He is visiting ACERH (UQ) from 1 August to 31 December. During his visit he is collaborating with ACERH researchers on a project which analyses data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey with the purpose of disclosing whether health status affects the utility of consumption. The research is unique as the literature is scarce on this subject, and the HILDA survey data are far more detailed than the data previously applied in existing studies. The research question is important as theoretical models on the demand for insurance assumes that health status and consumption enter the utility function independently. If this condition does not hold these models may be overestimating or underestimating the optimal level of demand.
July 2011 ACERH @ 8th World Congress on Health Economics Several ACERH staff and students gave presentations at the International Health Economics Association's 8th World Congress on Health Economics held in Toronto, Canada, from 10-13 July. A list of these presentations is provided below (presenting author's name underlined) together with links to the slides/posters for those presentations available for download.
ACERH welcomes new affiliate staff member ACERH (ANU) is pleased to welcome Dr Yijuan Chen from the Research School of Economics, ANU, as an affiliate of the Centre. ACERH staff member on sabbatical leave Professor Connelly is taking study leave from July to December 2011 and will be based at the University of Zurich. He will conduct independent research and pursue collaborative research opportunities in health economics and insurance economics during his leave.
June 2011 8th Annual Conference, Health Technology Assessment international (HTAi) Professor Jim Butler will attend the 8th Annual Conference of HTAi being held on 27-29 June in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is attending as representative of the Australian Government's Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC), and will speak in a meeting of the HTAi Policy Forum being held prior to the Conference on the role of the Evaluation Sub-Committee (ESC) (of which he is Chair) in the MSAC process. ACERH @ Australian Pain Society Conference Professor Luke Connelly gave an invited plenary presentation at the Australian Pain Society's 31st Annual Scientific Meeting held in Darwin, Northern Territory, from 12-16 June. His presentation, entitled 'Does compensation lead to worse health outcomes', concerned methodological problems with the empirical literature that interprets correlations between poor health outcomes and compensation as running from compensation-related processes (e.g., seeking compensation) to poorer health. Most of the empirical literature ignores a further possibility, namely, that people whose prognosis or recovery is worse may, other things equal, be more likely to seek compensation. He showed, using UK data from a whiplash study (and based on joint work with Natalie Spearing, Louis Pobereskin and Son Nghiem), that taking account of the possibility of bidirectional causality between compensation and health outcomes may radically change the conclusion one reaches in relation to the hypothesis that compensation leads to poorer health outcomes. To download the program for the event, click here. International Microsimulation Association Conference The 3rd International Microsimulation Association Conference, on the theme 'Microsimulation and Policy Design', was held on 8-10 June in Stockholm, Sweden, on 8-10 June. The detailed preliminary program for the Conference can be downloaded by clicking here. Dr Agnes Walker from ACERH (ANU) presented a paper entitled 'Cardiovascular disease and diabetes in Australia: Cost effectiveness of an integrated vascular risk assessment and management intervention' (abstract). The paper is co-authored by Professor Jim Butler (ANU), and by Professor Stephen Colagiuri and Dr Crystal Lee (University of Sydney). The related research was funded by an ARC Discovery Project grant.
May 2011 ACERH @ Post-Budget Health Briefing ACERH academic staff and students from both the ANU and UQ nodes attended a Post-Budget Health Briefing and breakfast on 12 May addressed by The Hon Nicola Roxon MP, Minister for Health and Ageing, and The Hon Mark Butler MP, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing. The event was organised by the Australian Institute of Policy & Science and held at Parliament House in Canberra.
April 2011 Dr Rasheda Khanam, a lecturer in economics at the University of Southern Queensland who holds an adjunct appointment at ACERH (UQ), was interviewed by the Herald Sun newspaper on 21 April on the subject 'Maternity Leave and Child Health and Development'. The article for which she was interviewed can be read here.
March 2011 Dr Julie Smith from ACERH (ANU) and two of her colleagues on the ARC Linkage Project gave seminar presentations in the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) Health Professional 2011 Seminar Series for Health Professionals this month. Dr Smith gave the presentation in Perth on 19 March, while Dr Lyn Craig from the University of New South Wales presented in Sydney on 16 March and Dr Ellen McIntyre from Flinders University presented in Adelaide on 17 March. The seminar presentation was entitled 'Working while breastfeeding: Best practice strategies for workplaces and childcare centres' and provided an update on research which Dr Smith and colleagues are currently undertaking on this issue. The presentation is available from the Project updates section of the Economics of Work and Breastfeeding web page on this web site. David Rowell, a current PhD student at ACERH (UQ), gave an address to The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in Sydney on 4 March. David gave this address in his capacity as the current holder of the Brian Gray Scholarship awarded by these institutions. The content of his address, entitled 'Moral hazard in the Australian market for comprehensive automobile insurance' draws from his research for his PhD thesis which is supervised by Dr Hong Son Nghiem (CONROD, UQ) and Professor Luke Connelly. To download the slides from David's presentation, click here.
February 2011 Professor Connelly gave a presentation entitled 'Whiplash and the Compensation Hypothesis' at a scientific symposium on Whiplash Associated Disorder held at the Hyatt Coolum on 14-17 February. The symposium was organised by the Centre for Clinical Research Excellence in Spinal Pain, Injury & Health (CCRE Spine) at the University of Queensland. The invitation-only meeting was attended by more than 20 researchers and clinicians in biomechanics and biomechanical engineering, physiotherapy, psychology and neurosurgery from Europe, North America and Australia. Professor Connelly also presented at the Whiplash Symposium 2011: How to Lessen the Transition to Chronicity, which was held on 19-20 February in Brisbane. A program for the Whiplash Symposium 2011 is available for download here.
January 2011 Australian Government Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC) Professor Jim Butler has been re-appointed as a member of MSAC and as Chair of MSAC's Evaluation Sub-Committee (ESC). Professor Jim Butler will attend the Policy Forum organised by Health Technology Assessment Internatioinal (HTAi) in London, UK, from 30 January to 1 February. He will be attending as a representative of the Australian Government Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC). The topic for the Forum is 'HTA-Regulatory Interaction'. While in London, Professor Butler and other MSAC and PBAC colleagues will also attend meetings with various staff at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Seminar @ National University of Singapore Dr Francesco Paloucci from ACERH (ANU) was invited to give a seminar at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, on 26 January 2011 (program). The title of Dr Paolucci's seminar was 'Risk equalisation in voluntary health insurance markets: A three country comparison' (abstract). |
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