1. Health Economics education (HEe) website – progress and update
Hema Mistry, Raymond Oppong & Emma Frew
HEU internal seminar
22nd November 2011

2. Objectives Originally developed by Prof. Nancy Devlin 3 main aims:
To encourage and support teaching and learning in health economics;
To create a community of health economics teachers; and
To promote health economics to potential students.
In January 2010, the HEU at Birmingham took over the responsibility of managing and updating the website

3. Funding Our project successfully gained funding for two projects:
to support Advisory Board meetings
The funding supports the travelling expenses of board members
to support audiovisual resources
Funding for 6 interviews with health economists

4. Advisory Group (1) Aims of advisory group:
guide the development of HEe;
ensure adequate representation of all types of teaching (undergrad, postgrad, DL);
act as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the website (all website activities are responsive to relevant events and opportunities)
9 individuals ensuring representation from the Economics Network, active teachers of HE and HESG.
Two meetings: September 2010 & August 2011.

5. Advisory Group (2) Two very productive meetings:
terms of reference agreed
agreed target Audience
1. Student section (courses, careers)
2. Teacher section (effective delivery of teaching, reading lists etc)
audio-visual project
marketing (launching the website)
funding opportunities to ensure sustainability of website

6. Student section (1)
Information on the type of HE courses that are available across the UK – short courses, post-graduate taught (e.g. MSc, DL) and research (e.g. PhDs)
Course directors invited to submit information advertising their course ( invitation)
Paragraph with details including:
Course description, links, target student population, strengths, information on fees, and why course different.

7. Student section (2) Different careers a HE can choose:
Academic, Government, NHS, NICE, Consultancy, Pharmaceutical
Pathways – this will help with the selection of ‘best’ course
‘Blog’ from a HE telling us about roles and responsibilities (questionnaire)
Day in the life of a ‘HE’
Careers section linked back to courses

8. Student section: progress so far (1)
Identified all known HE courses
Postgraduate research (PhDs)
Postgraduate taught (MSc, DL)
Short courses
46 s sent to all HE course directors
Some directors responsible for more than 1 HE course
As of 14th November – 20 responses about course description (these have been added to the website)
Postgraduate taught (includes HE modules) → 17 courses
Postgraduate research → 13 courses
Undergraduate modules → 5 courses
Short courses → 19 courses
No courses currently provided → 2 universities
Still awaiting responses from 26 s; 6 have said they will send info.

9. Student section: progress so far (2)
Careers (to add to website)
Academic – Emma Frew
Government - ? John Henderson
NHS – Ellen Rule
NICE – Alastair Fischer
Consultancy - ? Matthew Taylor & Zoe Philips
Pharmaceutical - ? Boyka Stoykova
Added section on doctoral seminars
Virtual research seminars showing work-in-progress connected via BT web conferencing
To interact with other PhD students without the additional travel expenses
Run by HERG, Brunel University

10. Teacher section Aim to enhance teaching (rather than list of slides)
Advice on how to teach ‘tricky’ topics
How the advice might differ depending on target audience
Aim is to have a ‘virtual’ colleague available to provide teaching advice to junior colleagues
Course directors invited to submit any useful teaching material ( invitation along with the course information)

11. Teacher section – progress (1)
Request for teaching material sent to 46 course directors
5 responses provided teaching material
KCL - an assignment, answers + marking criteria
LSHTM - weblink with useful teaching materials & publications
Sheffield - weblink for programmes
UEA – a quick guide to ‘macros’
York – DL weblink for course content
Compiled reading lists
Undergraduate and postgraduate introductory material as well as specific postgraduate topics.
We have identified teaching material that needs updating

12. Teacher section – progress (2)
For the teacher section we will categorise by topic area:
Introduction to Health Economics; Economic Evaluation & Decision Modelling; Health Policy; Health Systems; Health Econometrics; Equity; Demand for Health & Health Care; Market Failure; Rationing; Global Health & Trade; Pharmacoeconomics; Behavioural Economics and Capabilities
Each topic area will be split into 5 sections
Lecture slides
Audio-visual material
Group exercises
Assessment materials
Reading lists

13. Audio-visual project (1)
Stimulate students’ interest in HE, and make key contributions to HE research accessible to a wider audience
Aim is to produce a series of high-quality audio-visual resources, presenting contemporary HE issues and topics in an interesting & visually appealing way
The series will be based on a series of recorded interviews with leading HE
The interviews will be available as downloadable podcasts on the HEe website

14. Audio-visual project (2)
Funding for 6 interviews
Semi-structured with starting points agreed beforehand
Interviewees have final editing rights
8 interviews completed so far
In addition, a policy debate filmed as part of the Policy module on the MSc
Dr Ken Deacon (GP and PCT Medical Director); Robert White (Finance Director); Prof Clive Smee (Former chief economist for DH); Dr Kirsten Major (chief economist for North West NHS)

15. Audio-visual project (3)
The following videos have been added to the website:
Prof Jo Coast (Birmingham)
Possible disutility associated with explicit health care rationing
The economics of anti-microbial resistance
The capability approach in health economics
The role of qualitative research in health economics
The ICECAP measure (3 videos)
Limitations of quality-adjusted life years
Prof Cam Donaldson (Glasgow)
Social Business, health and wellbeing
Dr Tessa Peasgood (Sheffield)
Well-being,/happiness and health economics
Prof Mark Sculpher (York)
Economic evaluation to support decision making

16. Audio-visual project (4)
The following videos still to be added to the website:
Prof John Appleby (Kings Fund)
GP Commissioning
Dr Matt Stevenson (Sheffield)
Modelling
Dr Karen Bloor (York)
Medical labour markets
Prof Alan Maynard (York)
NHS reforms and GP commissioning
Policy debate (HEU, Birmingham)
Dr Ken Deacon; Robert White; Prof Clive Smee, Dr Kirsten Major

17. Next steps (1) Emailing course directors Student section
Original sent (June 2011) & follow-up sent (Oct 2011)
Good response to course information
Not so good response for teaching material (aids & slides) – what can we do here?
Student section
All course information has been uploaded onto website
Careers information needs to be added to website + contact missing careers people
Teaching section
Need to request for updated teaching slides from those who have already contributed
To update the website with additional teaching material i.e. reading lists
To find out what information is missing and to fill in the gaps e.g. a podcast on health econometrics

18. Next steps (2)
To help redesign the website (similar style to BBC website showing visually appealing snippets)
Teaching and student sections
Training at Bristol on 25th November
Marketing / launch of the website
Funding opportunities to ensure sustainability of website