The research interests of the HEP are very broad, covering the following areas: 

• Methods and applications of economic evaluation:  Most of the HEP members work in this area to some extent. Currently, we undertake collaborative work on cost-effectiveness / cost-benefit analyses of interventions in areas such as hemodialysis, long-term care for people with Alzheimer disease, foot problems, obesity, HIV, maternity care, mental health, audiology, multiple sclerosis, prostate cancer, breast cancer prevention and various aspects of cardiovascular disease. 
    
  We also work on methodological issues in this area, such as the development of ‘willingness to pay’ and quality adjusted life years as measures of the benefits of health care.
     
• Using economic techniques to aid priority setting in regional health authorities:  This work is being undertaken in three regional health authorities in Southern Alberta. The aims are to track resource expenditure within and across health care programs and to assess the feasibility of making ‘better’ uses of these resources. This work is co-ordinated by Cam Donaldson and Craig Mitton.
    
• Incentives in health care:  This work looks mainly at how incentives in health care can be improved and attempts to evaluate the effects of such improvements, e.g. performance-based contracting. So far, much work has been conducted by Mingshan Lu in the areas of mental health and substance abuse programs.
     
• Economics of public health and health behaviour:  This work is led by Alan Shiell and Chris Auld and covers several important areas, such as the economics of health promotion, health and labour market outcomes, demand for alcohol and tobacco products, behavioural responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and development of measures of the value of health promotion programs.
     
• Economics and health policy:  Recently, various members of the Program have conducted review work in the areas of Bill 11 and other reforms to the Canadian health care system.
    

Much of the research of HEP is funded from competitive sources, such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, the Kidney Foundation of Canada, the National Health Research and Development Program, the National Cancer Institutes of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.

  
Research Projects 

Current research projects (with source of funding and a contact) are listed below:

• Incentives and Accountability in Publicly-Funded Health Care: The Case of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment (Funded by Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research):  Lu
    
• Risk Selection and Matching under Performance-Based Contracting (Funded by Institute of Health Economics, Alberta):  Lu
    
• Separating the "True Effect" from "Gaming" in Incentive-Based Contracts in Health Care (Funded by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, Brandeis/Harvard Research Center on Managed Care and Drug Abuse Treatment):  Lu
    
• Payment Mechanisms for Physicians (Funded by Institute of Health Economics, Alberta)
    
• Service Delivery Patterns of Persons with Severe and Persistent Mental Illness: Continuity of Care, Clinical and Economic Outcomes (Funded by The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation):  Lu, Mitton
    
• Does Money Matter in Health Care? The Relationship Between Health and Health Expenditures (Funded by Institute of Health Economics, Alberta):  Auld
    
• Multi-disciplinary Evaluation of Specialized Living Arrangements for People With Alzheimer Disease (Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Alzheimer Society of Canada):  Donaldson
    
• The Economics of HIV/AIDS in a Region of Canada (Funded by the National Health Research and Development Program):  Donaldson
    
• Priority Setting in Health Regions: the Role of Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (funded by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation):  Donaldson, Mitton
    
• The use and misuse of economic evaluation in health care (Funded by the Institute of Health Economics, Alberta):  Donaldson
    
• Costs and effects of renal replacement therapy: accounting for case mix (funded by Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Calgary Regional Health Authority and Kidney Foundation of Canada):  Manns, Donaldson
    
• Mental Health, Wages, and Employment (funded by Institute of Health Economics):  Lu, Auld

     
  
Selected Publications by Health Economics Program Members
(1998 – present)

• Auld C, Donaldson C, Mitton C and Shackley P. Economic Evaluation. In: Detels R, Holland W, McEwan J, Omenn G, eds.  Oxford Textbook of Public Health (4th Edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 (forthcoming).
     
• Campbell M, Daly C, Wallace S, Cody J, Donaldson C, Grant A, Khan I, Lawrence P, Vale L, MacLeod A.  Evidence based medicine in nephrology: Identifying and critically appraising the literature.  Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation (In Press).
    
• Currie G, Dymond-Kerfoot K, Donaldson C, Macarthur C.  Are cost of injury studies useful?  Injury Prevention (In Press). 
    
• Daly CD, Cambell MK, MacLeod AM, Cody JD, Vale LD, Grant AM, Donaldson C et al.  Target and double bag systems reduce the incidence of CAPD peritonitis? A systematic review of randomized controlled trials.  Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation (In Press).
    
• Devereaux PJ, Manns BJ, Ghali WA, Quan H, Guyatt GH. Reviewing the reviewers: the quality of reporting in three review journals.  Accepted by Canadian Medical Association Journal, September 2000.  
    
• Devereaux PJ, Manns BJ, Ghali WA, Quan H, Guyatt GH. In the dark: physician interpretations and expert definitions of blinding terminology in randomized controlled trials. Accepted by JAMA, August 2000.
    
• Donaldson C, Hundley V and Mapp T. Willingness to pay: A method for measuring preferences for maternity care? Birth 1998; 25:33-40.
    
• Donaldson C. The (near) equivalence of cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis: Fact or fallacy. Pharmaco-Economics 1998; 13:389-396.
    
• Donaldson C. Economic evaluation: An ethical imperative? Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 1998; 4:40-44.
    
• Donaldson C, Jones A, Mapp T, Olsen JA. Using limited dependent variables to analyze willingness to pay data. Applied Economics 1998; 30:667-677.
    
• Donaldson C.  Valuing the benefits of publicly-provided health care: Does 'ability to pay' preclude the use of 'willingness to pay'?  Social Science and Medicine 1999; 49:551-563.
    
• Donaldson C.  Eliciting patients’ values by use of ‘willingness to pay’: Letting the theory drive the method.  Health Expectations (In Press).
    
• Gibb S, Donaldson C, Henshaw R. Assessing strength of preference for abortion method using willingness to pay. Journal of Advanced Nursing 1998; 27:30-36.
    
• Hawe P, Shiell A. Social capital and health promotion: a review. Social Science and Medicine 2000; 51: 871-875
   
• Kenny P, King M, Shiell A, Seymour J, Hall J, Langlands A, Boyages J. Early stage breast cancer: costs and quality of life one year after treatment by mastectomy or conservative surgery and radiation therapy. The Breast 2000; 9: 37-44
    
• Kenny P, Quine S, Shiell A, Cameron S. Participation in treatment decision-making by women with early stage breast cancer Health Expectations 1999; 2: 159-168  
    
• Langlois N, Donaldson C. Application of the principle of marginal analysis to sampling practice using prostatic chippings as a model. Journal of Clinical Pathology 1998; 51:104-107.
    
• Larcos G, Chi KKG, Shiell A, Berry G. Suspected acute pulmonary emboli: cost-effectiveness of chest helical computed tomography versus a standard diagnostic algorithm incorporating ventilation-perfusion scintigraphy Australian and New Zealand Journal of Medicine 2000; 30: 195-202
    
• Lu, Mingshan, and Thomas G. McGuire (forthcoming).  "The Productivity of Outpatient Treatment for Substance Abuse", The Journal of Human Resources.
    
• Lu, Mingshan, and Cam Donaldson, 2000, Developing Performance-Based Health Care Contracts: Economic Incentives, invited leading article, Disease Management and Health Outcomes 7(3): 127-137.
    
• Lu, Mingshan, 1999, Separating the "True Effect" from "Gaming" in Incentive-Based Contracts in Health Care, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, vol 8 no 3: 383-432.
    
• Lu, Mingshan, 1999, The Productivity of Mental Health Care: An Instrumental Variable Approach, Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics, vol 2 issue 2: 59-71.
    
• Manns BJ, Hyndman ME, Burgess ED, Parsons HG, Schaefer JP, Snyder F, Scott-Douglas NW. Oral vitamin B12 and high-dose folic acid in hemodialysis patients with hyperhomocyst(e)inemia: A randomized clinical trial.  Accepted by Kidney International, September 2000.
    
• Manns B, Donaldson C, Taub K.  Economic evaluation and end-stage renal disease: From basics to bedside.  American Journal of Kidney Disease (In Press).
    
• Manns BJ, Burgess ED, Parsons HG, Schaefer JP, Hyndman ME, Scott-Douglas, NW. Hyperhomocysteinemia, Anticardiolipin Antibody Status and the Risk for Vascular Access Thrombosis in Patients with End-Stage Renal Disease on Hemodialysis .  Kidney International 1999; 55: 315-320.
    
• McIntosh E, Donaldson C, Grant A. Economic evaluation of open versus laparoscopic hernia repair: Some pragmatic considerations for the measurement of costs. Seminars in Laparoscopic Surgery 1998; 5:242-247.
    
• McIntosh E, Donaldson C, Ryan M.  Methodologies and analysis in cost-benefit analysis in health care:  Does the state of the art reflect the state of the science?  Pharmaco-Economics 1999; 15:357-367.
    
• McLeod A, Grant A, Donaldson C et al. Effectiveness and efficiency of methods of dialysis therapy for end stage renal disease: Systematic reviews. Health Technology Assessment 1998; 2.
    
• Manns BJ, Burgess ED, Parsons HG, Schaefer JP, Hyndman ME, Scott-Douglas, NW. Hyperhomocysteinemia and the Risk for Atherosclerotic Vascular Disease in Patients with End-Stage Renal Disease. American Journal of Kidney Diseases, 1999; 34: 669-677.
    
• Mitton C, Donaldson C, Dean S, and West B. "Program Budgeting and Marginal Analysis: a Priority Setting Framework for Canadian Regional Health Authorities". Healthcare Management Forum 2000;13(4):24-31.
    
• Mitton C., Rose MS, Koshman ML and Sheldon RS. "Cost-utility Analysis of Pacemakers for the Treatment of Neurally Mediated Syncope". American Journal of Cardiology 1999; 84(11): 1356 -1359.  
    
• Mitton C. and Hailey D. "Health Technology Assessment and Policy Decisions on Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment". International Journal of Health Technology Assessment 1999; 15(4): 661-670.
    
• Olsen J-A, Donaldson C. Helicopters, hearts and hips: Using willingness to pay to set priorities for public sector health care programmes. Social Science and Medicine 1998; 46:1-12.
    
• Scott A, Currie, Donaldson C. Evaluating innovation in general practice: A pragmatic framework using programme budgeting and marginal analysis. Family Practice 1998; 15:216-222.
    
• Scott A, Shiell A. The use of multilevel analysis in health economics: an application to examining the effect of competition on general practitioners’ behaviour. Developments in Health Economics and Public Health Policy 1998; 6: 159-168
    
• Shackley P, Donaldson C.  Willingness to pay for publicly financed health care: How should we use the numbers?  Applied Economics (In Press).
    
• Shiell A, Jorm L, Carruthers R, Fitzsimmons GJ. Cost-effectiveness of measles outbreak intervention strategies. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 1998; 22: 126-132
    
• Shiell A, Brown S, Farrell G. Hepatitis C: an economic evaluation of extended treatment with interferon. Medical Journal of Australia 1999; 171: 189-193
   
• Shiell A, Seymour J, Hawe P, Cameron S. Are preferences for health states complete? Health Economics 2000; 9: 47-56
    
• Shiell A, Chapman S. The inertia of self-regulation: a game theoretic approach to reducing passive smoking in restaurants. Social Science and Medicine 2000; 51: 1111-1119  
    
• Thomas R, Donaldson C, Torgerson D.  Who answers willingness to pay questions?  Journal of Health Services Research and Policy 2000; 5:7-11.
    
• Vale L, Donaldson C, Daly C, Campbell M, Cody J, Grant A, Khan I, Lawrence P, Wallace S, MacLeod A.  Evidence-based medicine and health economics: A case study of end-stange renal disease.  Health Economics 2000; 9:337-351.

  
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