Dr. Shehzad Ali, from Western’s Schulich School of Medicine, was recently awarded a 4-year CIHR grant of $439,876 to examine ways to integrate equity into policy decision-making. Dr. Ali and colleagues will first explore the challenges and opportunities of incorporating equity into real-world economic evaluations through interviews with key health policy actors. The team will then conduct ‘equity-efficiency trade-off’ experiments using population surveys to quantify the relative value society places on reducing inequity at the cost of sacrificing efficiency. The work will fill an important gap by providing analysts and decision-makers with new ways to think about cost-effectiveness and inequity, considering domains such as socioeconomic status, gender and race. A key output of the project is first-of-their-kind guidelines to facilitate embedding equity considerations into health policy-focused economic evaluations. CRHESI will facilitate knowledge sharing and partner engagement, offering knowledge mobilization opportunities to link emerging findings to community priorities.
Watch this space for updates!