Health economics what is it how do you use it and why is it not quite as complicated as you think it might be stay tuned and find out more welcome back to this Global Health YouTube channel this is a channel for people that are obsessed with global health and want to make the world a better place if that's you please subscribe if you haven't my name is Greg Martin warning this video takes an unconventional look at economics if you're a PhD in economics you might want to look away now or watch this video under the supervision of a normal person viewer discretion is advised but first a big thank you to dcp3 for their support dcp3 stands for Disease Control priorities Third Edition dcp3 is a nine volume series that promotes the use of economic evaluation for priority setting across the world particularly in developing countries dcp3 has been produced by experts in health from across the world the project has been led by a team at the University of Washington 's Department of global Health it's important and fascinating work and it aspires to change the way the world saves lives find out more at DCP 3.org or click on the link that's in the description below now my very broad definition of economics and it's more caveat this is not an answer you want to put in an exam this is rather something you'd write out in left-handed crayon my definition of economics is economics is the science of how we decide what to do with our stuff and by stuff stuff I don't just mean money I mean how you decide how you're going to spend your time how you decide how you're going to spend your vote how it is that you decide who it is that you're going to marry it's about your preferences and the incentives and disincentives that drive the decisions that you make and by you I mean you as an individual or a company or a firm or an NGO or a UN agency or a country any individual or social aggregate that's making a decision about what to do with their stuff their time etc etc they're making an economic decision now let's talk about economics and health what decisions get made that affect health and how can we use economics to better understand those decisions first let's think of ourselves as individuals every day we make choices some of them are lifestyle choices what am I going to eat how much am I going to exercise some of them are choices about the extent to which we're going to Access healthcare and whenever we make those decisions we're weighing the value of the expected outcome or or the benefit against some set of Alternatives next Healthcare Providers pharmaceutical companies health insurance companies also need to make choices and decisions and their choices are largely about setting the right prices and providing the right quantity of healthcare related product and healthcare related services and of course that price setting has got a lot to do with the cost of producing the healthcare service or producing that product governments need to make decisions about how to spend their health budget they're interested in getting the most bang for their Buck but they're also interested in things like distributive justice and providing care for the poor incidentally I've got a video on distributive justice and I'll provide a link for that in the description below this video governments need to make decisions like are they going to rely on private healthcare provision or should Healthcare be free at the point of service and if so which Services should be included Nos and bilateral and multilateral funding agencies need to decide how it is that they're going to spend their resources and their money and how it is that they're going to get the most bang for their buck so to choose between possible interventions they may decide to calculate the the cost per disability adjusted life you're averted for each of those interventions in each of these examples somebody either acting for themselves or acting on behalf of some sort of aggregate or some sort of organization is needing to make a decision and in each case that decision is being driven largely by the perceived value of the outcome of the various options so economics tries to find ways of understanding understanding and quantifying that value and that benefit and that utility and so better understand the way decisions are made let's look at an example the cost of treating troma which is an eye infection that causes blindness mostly in subsaharan Africa is about $30 to $40 per Del averted whereas the cost of treating schizophrenia is about $6,000 per Del averted so for the same amount of money an NGO or government could theoretically buy 200 times more d is averted by investing in treatment for troma now importantly this only makes sense if there's actually incidences of troma in the population that you're considering so Health economic information is at its most powerful when it's combined with good epidemiological data now remember cost Effectiveness is an important factor that gets used in decision- making by policy makers and governments and NOS but it's not the only Factor I'm going to make a video in the future that looks specifically at Health policy and decision-making around Healthcare spending so if that interest you stay tuned watch this space And subscribe to this channel if you haven't already stick around and watch another video this channel has got videos on things like distributive justice how to get a job in global health study design and many more and remember make a comment below I'd love to hear your thoughts on health economics thanks for watching find out more about DCB 3 by clicking on the link in the description below take care