Public health technologies; public goods and public health; policies toward health and safety at work; health education; financing public health; public health and public behavior; interplay between public health and health care services; inter- play between public health and other sectors; economics of public health policy.
This morning saw headlines reporting the publication of an open letter to MPs calling for a ban on contact rugby in schools. The letter argues that the high impact collisions in rugby lead to a number of serious injuries including… Read More »Rugby, Rugby, Rugby
E-cigarettes have become, without doubt, one of the public health issues du jour. Many countries and states have been quick to prohibit them, while others continue to debate the issue. The debate ostensibly revolves around the relative harms of e-cigarettes:… Read More »E-cigarettes and the role of science in public health policy
Healthcare institutions are large, complex systems and evaluating the effects of policies or structural interventions within these systems is challenging. In many cases it is not possible to directly measure the effect of the intervention at the patient level. The… Read More »What’s wrong with a simple model?
The next #HEJC discussion will take place Thursday 26th February, at 11pm London time on Twitter. To see what this means for your time zone visit Time.is or join the Facebook event. For more information about the Health Economics Journal Club… Read More »#HEJC for 26/02/2015
Thrive: The Power of Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies Hardcover, 384 pages, ISBN: 9781846146053, published 3 July 2014 Amazon / Google Books / Allen Lane Mental illness reduces national income by about 4%, and yet we only spend about 13% of our health… Read More »Review: Thrive (Richard Layard, David Clark)
Making headlines this morning (Thursday 20th November) has been the report by McKinsey Global Institute, an offshoot of the management consultancy McKinsey, on the global economic impact of obesity. This report estimates that $2.0 trillion is spent annually worldwide as a… Read More »How do you solve a problem like obesity?
Monday saw the first strike by health service staff in England and Wales for 32 years. This dispute surrounds the refusal of the government to implement a 1% pay rise recommended by the NHS pay review body. The reason for… Read More »Nurses on strike
claimtoken-539efc0fe87b4 Back in March I made a note to myself to write a paper – or, more likely, a blog post – presenting a taxonomy of behavioural interventions. I had gotten tired of everything being called a ‘nudge’ and with debates… Read More »A taxonomy of behavioural interventions
Steven Levitt and his trusty Freakonomics sidekick were invited by David Cameron to advise on health policy, as they recount in their latest book. Apparently the PM walked out on them. Levitt has kindly given us some more details on his proposal for British healthcare. It consisted of… Read More »Recommended reading for Steven Levitt
Everybody’s talking about screening again, with good reason. Research seems to suggest that screening for breast cancer, using mammography, is not effective (let alone cost-effective). Here I present a view on the value of screening; the validity of which I… Read More »A comment on the value of screening