Let’s get REAL: the utility of economic evaluation in health and social care decision-making

Let's get REAL: the utility of economic evaluation in health and social care decision-making 

Achieving and sustaining improvements in health and social care requires well-designed solutions (interventions, programmes, or policies) that are often inherently complex and/or implemented within complex systems; as well as robust evaluation that is often also complex.

Professor Angela Bate's inaugural lecture builds on a movement in health economics, and economic evaluation, more precisely, that recognises that increasingly diverse methods of evaluation are required to 1) embrace and account for complexity, and 2) better meet the needs of decision-makers.

She will introduce realist evaluation as an established theory-based method for evaluating the impact of complex interventions and discuss the rationale for utilising theory driven methods alongside economic evaluations in circumstances where experimental designs may be unfeasible, or insufficient because they do not address the decision problem under investigation. Specifically, she will focus on the REEM project which seeks to integrate realist and economic evaluation methods to enable evaluators and decision-makers to establish what works, for whom, in which circumstances, whist integrating a better understanding of costs and consequences (including opportunity cost).

About the Speaker

Professor Angela Bate is a Health Economist and Health Services Researcher with a national and international reputation in the development and application of health economic methods in complex (public health) evaluations.

Before joining Northumbria University in 2017, Angela worked at Newcastle University for fourteen years as a Senior Research Fellow and member of the NIHR NENC Research Design Service (RDS). It was also whilst at Newcastle that Angela completed her PhD entitled "Managing Scarcity: understanding and developing healthcare commissioning", which utilised quantitative and qualitative research to interrogate approaches to primary care commissioning.

Angela has also worked at York University (Centre for Health Economics), Aberdeen University (Health Economics Research Unit), and freelanced for The Department of International Development (DfID), The British Council, and Save the Children UK. She is actively involved in regional, national and international research organisations including as an Associate member of Fuse (the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health) and member of the Complex Systems research group; the National Institute for Health Research School for Public Health Research; and the Social Value International Academic Research Group.