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Health Economics and Evaluation for Public Health

When you'll study it
Semester 2
CATS points
15
ECTS points
7.5
Level
Level 7
Module lead
Tracey Sach
Academic year
2025-26

Module overview

Economics is the study of how society decides what to produce, how to produce it and for whom to produce it. Society has limited resources available to meet unlimited wants with respect to achieving health. Pressures from demographic change, technological advances and changing lifestyle habits make health economics an interesting and important aspect of everyday life as choices must be made as to what health programmes can be provided and how they should be provided. Health economics is relevant to many sectors (e.g., health services, public health, medicine, pharmaceutical and health technology industry), which makes this module of direct interest to the postgraduate programmes in Public Health and Global Health.

The module is organised in two sections. The first section introduces economic theory and important fundamental economic concepts, considers health care as a commodity and looks at different types of health care systems. Utilising this theory as underpinning knowledge the module turns to focus on the methodology that can be used to evaluate public health services. Firstly, it introduces methods of pragmatic evaluation of health services for public health practice, which will equip those completing the module with useful frameworks that are directly applicable to health contexts globally. Secondly, it will cover the methodology used in conducting economic evaluation and how these are used to influence decision making.