Centre for Health Economics

CHE Policy Forum 2026: Meet our Presenter, Professor Claire Rothery

This year’s CHE Policy Forum will explore how external assessment groups shape evidence, scrutiny and transparency in NICE - National Institute for Health and Care Excellence decision-making.

The forum will be led by Professor Claire Rothery, Professor of Health Economics and Co-Lead of the York Technology Assessment Reviews programme. The programme delivers rigorous, independent assessments of new pharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostics for NICE.

Claire’s research focuses on health technology assessment methods and decision-analytic modelling, with particular expertise in uncertainty analysis and Value of Information (VOI) for reimbursement and research prioritisation decisions.

She also contributed directly to the 2022 NICE methods and processes review and co-chaired the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Task Force on Emerging Good Practices for VOI Analysis.

Join us:

🗓️ Thursday 10 September 2026 | 🕑 2.00–3.30pm
📍 University of York + online

Find out more and register to attend: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/che-policy-forum-2026-behind-the-nice-curtain-tickets-1993594273137

Learn to analyse the equity impacts of health programmes and trade-offs with cost-effectiveness 📊

Our upcoming Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (DCEA) short course is delivered by experts who developed many of the methods and resources now used internationally.

📅 19 October–20 November 2026
🕒 5-week live online course
💻 Interactive sessions, practical exercises & weekly Q&A
👥 For health economists and health professionals with experience in health economic evaluation

Learn more and register: https://dcea.he-evalcourses.com/

The achievement of universal health coverage (UHC) is usually framed as a financing problem in terms of how much governments are willing to spend on healthcare.🏛️

Our research suggests that this framing is incomplete.

Analysing data from 141 countries over two decades, we found that stronger state capacity, the ability of governments and associated agencies to implement and execute policies effectively and efficiently, is associated with higher public investment in health and better financial protection, including lower out-of-pocket costs. These effects are strongest in low- and middle-income countries.

The findings re-emphasise that progress towards UHC is not only a fiscal challenge but also a system-wide governance challenge. Decision-makers need to pay attention to key aspects of state capacity if they want to ensure that financial resources for healthcare translate into better population health outcomes.🔎

Read more about our research: https://www.york.ac.uk/che/outputs/research-summaries/

Meet the your course leader: Francesco Longo 🤝

Francesco is a health economist whose research focuses on economic evaluations and the assessment of opportunity cost in the social and long-term care sector in England. He has also worked on hospital performance, including efficiency, quality, and competition, providing insights into how resources can be allocated effectively in healthcare systems.

Learn directly from Francesco and our expert CHE faculty in a hands-on, three-day in-person short course in Advanced Statistical Methods in Economic Evaluation for Health Technology Assessment.

📅 8–10 September 2026 | 📍 York, UK
➡️ Sign up & view programme: https://www.york.ac.uk/che/courses/statistical-methods/

Join one of the world's leading Health Economics research centres.

We are hiring a Research Fellow within CHE's Health Policy team, to work on https://https://eshcru.com/ (fixed term until 31 Dec 2028).

📅Apply by 8 September 2026: https://jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/research-fellow-616134.html

Move beyond theory with a practical, skills-based approach to distributional cost-effectiveness analysis 📚

Our upcoming live Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis course is built around five timetabled modules. The teaching format includes:

1️⃣ Video Presentations: Bite-size videos from leading experts in equity methods.
2️⃣ Hands-on Practice: Updated exercises using Microsoft Excel and a dedicated web tool, complete with video walkthroughs.
3️⃣ Live Support: Weekly one-hour live Question and Answer sessions and informal networking via Zoom.

📅 19 October–20 November 2026

Join the course: https://dcea.he-evalcourses.com/courses/distributional-cost-effectiveness-analysis-online-course-live-2026

Meet your short course tutor: Beth Woods 🤝

Beth is a Senior Research Fellow in the Economic Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment (TEEHTA) team at CHE.

Prior to joining CHE, Beth was a Director in the Health Economics team at Oxford Outcomes, where she led applied economic evaluations. She has worked on a wide range of technologies and contributed to methods in the field, including model structuring in oncology, pharmaceutical pricing policy, and evaluation of technologies addressing antimicrobial resistance.

Learn directly from Beth and our expert CHE faculty in a hands-on, three-day in-person short course in Advanced Statistical Methods in Economic Evaluation for Health Technology Assessment.

📅 8–10 September 2026 | 📍 York, UK
➡️ Sign up & view programme: https://www.york.ac.uk/che/courses/statistical-methods/

What happens behind the scenes of NICE decision-making?

Join us for the CHE Policy Forum 2026 to explore the evolving role of External Assessment Groups in shaping evidence, scrutiny, and transparency in NICE decisions.

🗓️ 10 September 2026 | 🕑 2.00–3.30pm
📍 University of York + online

🗣️Presented by ProfessorClaire Rothery from CHE
🎤 Discussant: Raju Reddy FRCA MBA, Consultant Paediatric Anaesthetist, Birmingham Children’s Hospital

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/che-policy-forum-2026-behind-the-nice-curtain-tickets-1993594273137

Master real-world HTA with CHE💻

Join our in-person Advanced Statistical Methods in Economic Evaluation for Health Technology Assessment in York.

📅8–10 September 2026.
➡️Learn more and book: https://www.york.ac.uk/che/courses/statistical-methods/

How can we make information about health inequality impacts and trade-offs more transparent and usable?

Our latest research introduces two simple metrics for distributional cost-effectiveness analysis (DCEA):

📊 The change in predicted health gap, which quantifies the size of the health inequality impact. It shows how much an intervention changes health inequality between the least and most disadvantaged groups, expressed either in QALYs or as a proportion of health opportunity cost.

⚖️ The inequality-adjusted ICER and the corresponding Health Inequality Modifier (HIM), which quantifies the value of the health inequality impact. It shows how much more (or less) generous a cost-effectiveness threshold would become after factoring in the health inequality impact, given a high, medium or low degree of concern for reducing social inequality in health.

Applying these methods to 1,336 diseases in England showed that:

✅ The size of an intervention's impact on health inequality depends not only on who gains and loses, but also on how cost-effective the intervention is.

✅ Most health inequality modifiers are modest, compared with existing modifiers for disease severity and highly specialised technologies, even with a high degree of concern for reducing social inequality in health.

These findings are directly relevant to evolving NICE methods, which now allow evidence from DCEA to inform health technology assessments where interventions have substantial impacts on health inequality.

Read more about our research and findings: https://www.york.ac.uk/che/outputs/research-summaries/