Centre for Health Economics

Stay informed with the latest from CHE 📢

The Spring 2026 issue of Health Economics News is now out. In this issue:

📰 News from CHE – including a new £11 million NIHR Mental Health Award, postgraduate success, and a CHE colleague receiving a lifetime award
👥 Spotlights – on the researchers and professional staff behind our work
📊 Research – the latest findings and publications from our researchers
🤝 Opportunities – ways to get involved with CHE

Read the full newsletter: https://0q1zg.mjt.lu/nl3/adazxVGrZquRrmsNUCw2Xw?m=Ac4AABv7smAAAAAAAAAAA-TJcqEAAAAC-KoAAAAAACKrJQBqIVw-Fo72OWxHQnGnOltMfuiW5AAIPnA&b=be16add3&e=d7a3a32b&x=K-6Q61hzbuteSCDVMkS3xfxfbti83sIx1zKbb64qrZI

Join our three-day in-person short course in Advanced Statistical Methods in Economic Evaluation for in York 📊

Combining lectures with hands-on Stata exercises with real-world health economics data, our course will equip you to apply complex methods confidently and practically.

📅 8–10 September 2026
📍University of York

Secure your spot: https://www.york.ac.uk/che/courses/statistical-methods/

Applications are still open for the Real Supply Unit PhD Studentship (2026/27) based at CHE 📢

This is an exciting opportunity to work with researchers in one of the world’s leading health economics research groups, internationally recognised for high-quality, policy-relevant research.

We are offering one fully-funded PhD Studentship across any of the following topic areas:

1️⃣ The consequences of non-marginal changes in recruitment into healthcare training
2️⃣ International migration of the health and social care workforce
3️⃣ Automation in health and social care

🔗 Learn more and apply:

REAL Supply Research Unit - PhD studentship opportunity 2026/27 Applications should be received no later than Monday 13 July 2026 at 9am (GMT).

Do longer waiting times worsen patient outcomes?🕘

Our latest Research Summary examines how delays affect survival and recovery rates for two common coronary heart disease procedures in England before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: bypass surgery and angioplasty.

Before the pandemic, there was little evidence that longer waits worsened outcomes. But during the pandemic, a two-month longer wait for bypass surgery was linked to higher mortality risk and longer hospital stays, particularly among older patients, those with more complex health issues, and individuals from more deprived areas.

The findings highlight an important message for policymakers: waiting lists are not only an administrative challenge, long delays can create real clinical risks for some patients. 💡

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

Health technology assessment increasingly relies on formal tools such as cost-effectiveness analysis, Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs), thresholds and structured evidence reviews.

These tools are indispensable, but they cannot by themselves settle questions of relevance, interpretation, fairness, implementation or public justification.

Our latest Research Paper by Ahmet Küçükuncular and Anthony J Culyer argues that deliberative processes in health technology assessment matter not because deliberation is inherently virtuous, nor because algorithms are unhelpful, but because decisions about health technologies involve heterogeneous evidence, contested values, uncertainty and context-sensitive trade-offs that cannot responsibly be resolved by algorithm alone.

The paper is organised around two linked tasks. The first is conjectural: to identify when deliberation is likely to be useful by distinguishing it from algorithmic reasoning, consultation and commenting, and by explaining why evidence does not combine itself into guidance. The second is evaluative: to propose tests for judging whether deliberation improves, or is likely to improve, decision quality.

According to the research, a better decision is one that is more comprehensively evidence-informed, better matched to the context of application, more efficiently implementable and more widely acceptable to those affected by it, whether positively or negatively. It further argues that deliberation may be ethically constitutive of legitimacy in public healthcare decision making, since allocation decisions require reasons that are public, contestable and defensible.

It concludes by setting out a future agenda concerned with comparing deliberative and alternative processes, assessing their cost-effectiveness, building case-based institutional memory, improving stakeholder involvement and making anonymous opportunity cost victims more visible.

Read the full Research Paper: https://lnkd.in/eZ7TxThH

Final call for the Advanced Decision Modelling for Health Economic Evaluation short course⏳

Do not miss the opportunity to:

🚀 Master advanced modelling techniques used by NICE and WHO
🤝 Join a global cohort
📝Learn directly from leading experts in the field

The course begins Monday 8 June.

Find out more and sign up: https://modelling.he-evalcourses.com/courses/advanced-course-2026

Final call for the 2026 Analysing Patient Data using NHS England data workshop ⏳

Don't miss the opportunity to:

🚀 Master large datasets like Hospital Episode Statistics, Emergency Care Data Sets, and Patient Reported Outcome Measures data
🤝 Learn from leading experts in the field
📝 Construct and analyse key variables such as waiting times or length of stay

The course runs from Monday 15 to Tuesday 16 of June at the University of York.

Learn more and register now: https://www.york.ac.uk/che/courses/patient-data/

Master Advanced Decision Modelling with CHE and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine📊

Our upcoming Decision Modelling for Health Economic Evaluation advanced short course is led by Professor Mark Sculpher and Professor Andrew Briggs, internationally recognised for their contributions to health economic evaluation and authors of widely used textbooks on decision modelling and cost-effectiveness analysis.

📅 8 June – 17 July 2026
💻 Online, live sessions with Q&A

Learn from the researchers who are shaping the field: https://modelling.he-evalcourses.com/courses/advanced-course-2026

Thanzi secures landmark grant for new project across Namibia and Zambia! 🎉

Funded by The Life You Can Save, the new project titled Thanzi Konse, will build on the wider Thanzi Programme, which supports health system strengthening and health economics capacity development across several African countries, including Eswatini, Gambia, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

This new phase expands the programme’s impact into Namibia and Zambia through collaboration with regional partners including the Ministry of Health and Social Services in Namibia), the Ministry of Health in Zambia, the University of Namibia, the The University Of Zambia, and the ECSA Health Community.

Together, these partnerships will help ensure research is embedded in national decision-making and responsive to local priorities.🌍

Learn more about Thanzi's new project: https://www.york.ac.uk/che/news/news-2026/thanzi-konse-grant2026/

Shape the future supply of health and care in England 🏥

Apply for our fully funded Real Supply Research Unit PhD studentship and join an international community at one of the world’s leading research centres in health economics.

🗓️ Apply by Monday 13 July 2026 at 9am (GMT).

👉 Find out more and apply: https://www.york.ac.uk/che/news/news-2026/phd-studentship-advert-2026/