Inequality and Inequity in Health and Healthcare

Who?

Économie et Politiques de Santé (ECOPOL), Unisanté
Faculté de biologie et médecine, Université de Lausanne

When?

28 April - 2 May 2025

Where?

UNIL campus, Switzerland

For whom?

International PhD students or postdocs in Economics, health economics, public health, epidemiology, health informatics, biostatistics, political sciences, decision science. Limited places for professionals

How much?

SSPH+ PhD Students: CHF 300.- / PhD Students: CHF 500.- / Professionals: CHF 1500.-

Credits?

Non credited course, Official Certificate of Attendance delivered

Language?

English

Prof. Joachim Marti, Unisanté (Unviersity of Lausanne).

Prof. Owen O’Donnell, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Prof. Tom Van Ourti, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

The course is targeted at economists embarking on research on population health and healthcare delivery, as well as at researchers from the field of public health wishing to become competent in techniques used by economists to analyze health inequality.

Health differs markedly by education, race, occupation and income. In high-income countries, a 30-year-old male college graduate can expect to live almost eight years longer than a contemporary with only compulsory schooling. Narrowing such socioeconomic disparities in health is a primary objective of public health. Within health systems, administrators are often expected to ensure care is delivered equitably and yet health economic evaluation and population health monitoring often neglects distributional objectives.

This course will arm you with tools to measure inequality and inequity in health and healthcare. In addition to gaining competence in the computation of health inequality indices, you will be forced to consider the normative implications of the measures. You will be introduced to analysis of equity in the distribution of health care and learn how the tools of health inequality measurement can be used to make cost-effectiveness analysis and population health measurement sensitive to equity objectives.

To attain competence in:

• normative evaluation of health inequality;
• measurement of health inequality;
• computation of health inequality indices;
• decomposition of inequality in health and healthcare;
• assessment of equity in the distribution of healthcare;
• equity-sensitive health economic evaluation.
• equity-sensitive population health monitoring

The course consists of:

• Webcast lectures
• Q&A & seminars on lecture material
• Practical computing sessions
• Collaboration in student groups
• Empirical assignments
• Student presentations

Webcast lectures introduce concepts, explain measures and models, and review evidence. They provide the core material reviewed and discussed in the Q&A and applied in the practical computing sessions. You must watch the relevant webcast before joining the respective Q&A or practical. It is advised to do this before travelling to Lausanne. Otherwise, you expected to watch them in the evenings.

Q&As provide an opportunity to clarify and reflect critically on the material covered in the webcast lectures and to explore its wider relevance. Lectures end with questions for discussion. Be prepared to discuss these in class.

Practical computing sessions using Stata^® provide hands-on experience with the computation of measures and application of decomposition techniques. Example Stata do files are provided. You are expected to have your own laptop with Statainstalled. If you do not have Stata installed on your laptop, please contact the programme administration before arrival for the course. Two exercises will be conducted using Excel. Each practical will be introduced by one of the faculty, students will then work in groups on the practical. Immediately afterwards, students have the opportunity to clarify understanding in a Q&A. Following that, each student group will submit an assignment related to the practical.

Empirical assignments are completed and submitted throughout the week.

Presentations. Students are strongly encouraged to present their own (ongoing) research (plans) during the last two sessions on Friday. The faculty and the attending students will provide feedback. Consider taking this opportunity and send an email ASAP to vanourti@ese.eur.nl to book a slot. We have in mind allocating slots of 15 minutes presentation and 5 minutes discussion per student.

Course Material: Webcasts, assignments, Stata do, ado and data files, and some of the book chapters referenced are available from the Course Material document. For each topic, we give essential reading that must be done before the respective sessions. In addition, we provide a list of background reading related to each topic. You are NOT expected to read all of these references. They are provided to make citation in lectures easier and to identify key references on a topic that the interested student may want to follow up.

You find here below the programme, which also contains the course material. 

Programme

SSPH+ PhD students: CHF 300.-
PhD students: CHF 500.-
Professionals: CHF 1500.- 

The amount covers :

• Tuition fees
• Lunches and coffee breaks
• Social event

Please note that accommodation is not covered by the fees.

Application should include:

1. A CV
2. A motivation letter explaining the added value of the summer school to your path

Application deadline is 20 March 2025.